Project description:The study involved transcriptome analysis using RNA-seq knockdown of BORIS/CTCFL gene expression in K652 cancer cell line using inducible shRNA. The K562 cell line is the only cancer cell line that is known to be dependent on BORIS for proliferation and self-renewal of stemness. The goal of the study was to investigate the early/immediate small RNA transcriptional response to BORIS downregulation (over 10-fold reduction in protein level) using an inducible shRNA.
Project description:The study involved transcriptome analysis using RNA-seq knockdown of BORIS/CTCFL gene expression in K652 cancer cell line using inducible shRNA. The K562 cell line is the only cancer cell line that is known to be dependent on BORIS for proliferation and self-renewal of stemness. The goal of the study was to investigate the early/immediate transcriptional response to BORIS downregulation (over 10-fold reduction in protein level) using an inducible shRNA.
Project description:The identification of prognostic biomarkers is a priority for patients suffering from high-grade serous ovarian cancer (SOC), which accounts for >70% of ovarian cancer (OC) deaths. Meanwhile borderline ovarian cancer (BOC) is a low malignancy tumor and usually patients undergo surgery with low probabilities of recurrence. However, SOC remains the most lethal neoplasm due to the lack of biomarkers for early diagnosis and prognosis. In this regard BORIS (CTCFL), a CTCF paralog, is a promising cancer biomarker that is overexpressed and controls transcription in several cancer types, mainly in OC. Studies suggest that BORIS has an important function in OC by altering gene expression, but the effect and extent to which BORIS influences transcription in OC from a genome-wide perspective is unclear. Here we sought to identify BORIS target genes in an OC cell line (OVCAR3) with potential biomarker use in OC tumor samples. To achieve this, we performed in vitro knockout (KO) and knockdown (KD) experiments of BORIS in OVCAR3 cell line followed by expression microarrays and bioinformatics network enrichment analysis to identify relevant BORIS target genes.
Project description:Brother of Regulator of Imprinted Sites (BORIS) is a DNA binding protein with high similarity to CCCTC binding factor (CTCF), a multifunctional transcription factor that plays an important role in genome organization. Like CTCF, BORIS plays a role in transcriptional regulation. BORIS becomes aberrantly expressed in melanoma with a higher frequency in metastatic tumors compared to primary tumors, which indicates a role for BORIS in melanoma progression. Currently, little is known about the role of BORIS in melanoma. To gain insight into the functional role of BORIS in melanoma we established doxycycline-inducible BORIS expression in the MM057 melanoma cell line that harbors a proliferation-associated transcriptome. Next, we used RNA-seq to investigate BORIS-mediated transcriptional changes. We show that differentially expressed genes are enriched among invasion-related processes and gene signatures, indicating that BORIS expression contributes to an EMT-like switch from a proliferation to invasion-associated transcriptome. In agreement with these findings, we demonstrate that BORIS overexpression leads to reduced proliferation and increased migration and invasion. Taken together, these data indicate that expression of BORIS promotes a switch from a proliferative to invasive state at both the transcriptional and phenotypic level in melanoma cell lines.