BACKGROUND: Liver regeneration is the key factor influencing the prognosis of living donor liver transplantation. There has not been the research on special miRNA of liver regeneration after living donor liver transplantation. OBJECTIVE: To analyze the variation of miRNAs expression profile after rat reduced-size liver transplantation at certain time point, select and verify target miRNA which can provide targeting intervention strategies in liver regeneration after rat reduced-size liver transplantation and provide theoretical evidence for liver regeneration after living donor liver transplantation. METHODS: The reduced-size liver transplantation models were established. miRNAs microarray was used to detect miRNA expression. In differentially expressed microRNAs, real-time quantitative PCR was utilized to detect target miRNAs. The credibility of miRNAs microarray results was verified. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Compared with rat liver tissue in the sham operation group, 11 miRNAs up-regulated in reduced-size liver transplantation, including let-7b-5p, let-7c-5p, miR-101a-3p, miR-103-3p, miR-130a-3p, miR-142-5p, miR-186-5p, miR-199a-3p, miR-21-5p, 221-3p and miR-34a-5p. Four miRNAs were down-regulated, including miR-26b-5p, miR-150-5p, miR-19a-3p and rno-miR-146-5p. PCR test further verified that miR-221-3p and miR-199a-3p expression changes approximated the chip results at 24, 48 hours and 1 week, indicating that results of miRNA microarray were believable. These results verified that it exists variation of miRNAs expression profile after rat reduced-size liver transplantation, which picked out and verified the target miRNAs. © 2017, Journal of Clinical Rehabilitative Tissue Engineering Research. All rights reserved.