Among the novel validated miR-34a targets that we elucidated here, ANK3, is localized at the axon initial segment62, 63, and recent findings have reported that it selectively decreased in the cerebellum of BD patients44, the same brain region we observed to show elevated miR-34a levels in the present study. In addition, CACNB3 is involved in the regulation of surface expression and gating of the α-subunit (CACNA1C)64, which has also been recently reported to be downregulated in the cerebellum of BD patients43, (S.J.H., manuscript in preparation), and shown here to be indirectly affected my miR-34a overexpression as part of the NanoString profiling. Finally, in brain, DDN is a postsynaptic component of cytoskeletal modifications at the synapse that interacts with α-actinin and whose mRNA is localized to the synapse through a specific 3’UTR65. Therefore, the newly validated targets of miR-34a uncovered in our study are strongly linked to neuronal structure and function. Not surprisingly, when we analyzed miR-34a predicted targets for gene ontology parameters, we found that molecular networks related to neuronal development, differentiation and synaptic plasticity were among the top significant
