Fig. 4

miR-451a and miR-21-3p target OXTR 3′UTR, and miR-21-5p expression levels correlate with OXTR expression levels. a Schematic representation of the 3′UTR of the OXTR mRNA, containing seed regions for miR-451a and miR-21-5p. b Luciferase assays assessing the effect of microRNA expression on the 3′UTR of the OXTR transcript. Expression of either miR-451a or miR-21-5p led to a significant reduction in translation from the luciferase-3′UTR OXTR transcript, compared to GFP expressing vector. *p value <0.05, **p value <0.01. Two-tailed t test. c Luciferase assay showing effect of miR-451a and miR-21-5p on luciferase expression, in comparison to miR-7. *p value <0.05, **p value <0.01. One-tailed t-test. d Box and whisker plot of OXTR gene expression levels in human brain, as assessed by real-time PCR. p = 0.0052 in two-tailed t-test. e, f Spearman’s correlation coefficient and respective p value between miR-21-5p (d) or miR-451a (e) expression and OXTR gene expression. There is a significant positive correlation between miR-21-5p expression and OXTR gene expression