Starting with 250 ng of total RNA, the labeling process begins with poly-A tailing of each RNA strand using poly-A polymerase, followed by ligation of biotin-labeled 3DNA dendrimer. Biotinylated RNA strands were hybridized at 48 °C for 18 h on the GeneChip microRNA 4.0 Array (Affymetrix, Santa Clara, CA, USA). The GeneChip microRNA 4.0 Array was washed and stained in the Fluidics Station 450 (Affymetrix, CA, USA). Amplified fluorescence signals by the branched structure of 3DNA dendrimer were scanned using GeneChip Scanner 3000 7G (Affymetrix).
The arrays were analyzed using an Agilent scanner with associated software. The expression levels of miRNAs were calculated with Expression Console 1.4 (Affymetrix, Santa Clara, CA, USA). Relative signal intensities for each miRNA were generated using the Robust Multi-Array Average algorithm. Target prediction were analyzed using the miRBase, miRDB, TargetScan and microRNA.org DB.