TGFB1 and thoracic aortic aneurysm: In order to corroborate the RNA sequencing-based predictions, we performed qRT-PCR analysis to examine the abundance of five selected miRNAs (mir-10a-5p and miR-155-5p exhibited the greatest up/down fold changes; miR-126-3p, mir-133a-3p and miR-148a-3p were implicated in TGF-β signaling routes, see below) in the independent group of 37 samples containing 20 non-TAA and 17 thoracic aortic aneurysm tissues (Supplementary Table S1).