SNHG3 cooperates with ELAVL2 to modulate cell apoptosis and extracellular matrix accumulation by stabilizing SNAI2 in human trabecular meshwork cells under oxidative stress

Glaucoma is the main reason for irreversible blindness, and pathological increased intraocular pressure is the leading risk factor for glaucoma. It is reported that trabecular meshwork cell injury is closely associated with the elevated intraocular pressure. The current study aimed to investigate the role of small nucleolar RNA host gene 3 (SNHG3) in human trabecular meshwork (HTM) cells under oxidative stress. A series of experiments including real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction, subcellular fractionation assay, western blot analysis, cell counting kit-8 assay, RNA pull down, flow cytometry analysis, and RNA immunoprecipitation assay were used to explore the biological function and regulatory mechanism of SNHG3 in HTM cells under oxidative stress. First, we observed that H2O2 induced SNHG3 upregulation in HTM cells. Then, we found that SNHG3 silencing alleviated H2O2-induced oxidative damage in HTM cells. Moreover, snail family transcriptional repressor 2 (SNAI2) knockdown alleviated the oxidative damage induced by H2O2 in HTM cells. Mechanistically, SNHG3 bound with ELAV like RNA binding protein 2 (ELAVL2) to stabilize SNAI2. Finally, SNAI2 overexpression counteracted the effect of SNHG3 silencing on H2O2-treated HTM cells. In conclusion, our results demonstrated that SNHG3 cooperated with ELAVL2 to modulate cell apoptosis and extracellular matrix accumulation by stabilizing SNAI2 in HTM cells under oxidative stress.