Project description:Only a small proportion of cases suspected to have Lynch Syndrome (LS) can be explained by mutation in the mismatch repair (MMR) genes. This study aimed to identify rare CNVs that may contribute to an increased risk for hereditary colorectal cancer in patients with MMR proficiency.
Project description:Only a small proportion of cases suspected to have Lynch Syndrome (LS) can be explained by mutation in the mismatch repair (MMR) genes. This study aimed to identify rare CNVs that may contribute to an increased risk for hereditary colorectal cancer in patients with MMR proficiency.
Project description:The mismatch repair (MMR) family is a highly conserved group of proteins that function in correcting base-base and insertion-deletion mismatches generated during DNA replication. To systematically investigate the mismatch repair pathway, we conducted a proteomic analysis and identified MMR-associated protein complexes using a tandem-affinity purification coupled with mass spectrometry (TAP-MS) method. In total, we identified 262 high-confidence candidate interaction proteins (HCIPs).
Project description:DNA mismatch repair (MMR) is an evolutionarily conserved process that corrects innate DNA polymerase infidelities during replication to maintain genomic integrity. Defects in a subset of MMR genes are associated with hereditary non-polyposis colon cancer and some other sporadic cancers, highlighting the crucial role for MMR in genome maintenance. In E. coli a helicase implicated in the MMR process is well characterized, and named UvrD, whereas in mammals it has not been identified yet, even though the eukaryotic DNA mismatch pathway is analogous to the bacterial one and uses a similar repair mechanism and key components. Here we identify MCM9 as a helicase playing a vital role in MMR in mammals. MCM9 is the last discovered member of the MCM2-9 family, and has been implicated in replication and homologous recombination processes. By an affinity-purification proteomic approach, we found that MCM9 interacts with the MMR initiation complex. Immortalized cells from MCM9 knockout mice showed clear length alterations in their microsatellites, and a dramatic MMR deficiency compared to wild-type cells. We also found that a helicase-dead form of MCM9 is totally unable to restore the MMR deficiency phenotype. Furthermore, using an siRNA approach in human cells, we demonstrated that MCM9 is regulated by MSH2, a protein responsible for mismatch recognition. Our results clearly reveal that MCM9 functions as a helicase for DNA mismatch repair in mammals, and thus is essential for the maintenance of genome stability. Proteomics analysis: FLAG-HA-tagged human MCM9 plus associated proteins were isolated by tandem affinity purification from nuclear extracts of stably-expressing HeLa S3 cells, then analysed by SDS-PAGE and silver staining. Gel lanes were cut into slices, which were processed and analysed separately. Proteins in each gel slice were digested with trypsin, extracted and analysed by LC-MS/MS on a Thermo Scientific LTQ Velos mass spectrometer, generating a series of MS RAW files. Bioinformatics: Peptide and protein identification from MS data was performed using the Sequest program, with a human IPI sequence database (v.3.60). Trypsin was defined as the protease used, a peptide mass tolerance of 2.5 was specified, and all peptide matches have a Sequest Xcorr score ≥0.5.
Project description:Tumor mutation burden (TMB) is an evolving biomarker for predicting response to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI’s). The goal of this study was to evaluate the use of RNA-seq for determining TMB in patients with defective DNA MMR (dMMR) due to MMR mutations or MLH1 promoter hypermethylation (HM) and tumors without dMMR. We included tumors and paired normal tissue from 58 patients for TMB analysis using RNA-seq. Forty-six tumors were MSI-H (29 with a DNA MMR germline mutation and 17 with MLH1 promoter HM) and 12 were MSS. TMB was measured using the expressed somatic nucleotide variants (eTMB). We developed a method that leverages mutational signatures to remove FFPE derived artifact from total eTMB and thereby accurately measure the eTMB. There was a significant difference in the eTMB observed between MSI-H and MSS cases; MSI-H cases had a median of 27.3 mutations/Mb compared to 6.7 mutations/Mb for MSS cases (p=3.5e-9). Among tumors with dMMR the tumors with DNA MMR mutations had a significantly higher eTMB (p=0.037) than tumors with MLH1 promoter HM: a median of 28.1 mutations/Mb vs. a median of 17.5 mutations/Mb. Furthermore, through multivariate analysis we found that MSI status, tissue type (endometrial or colorectal) and patient ages are significantly associated with eTMB. These results demonstrate that RNA-seq analysis can be used to measure eTMB in FFPE tumor specimens. Further studies are needed to determine how eTMB as determined by RNA-seq compares to TMB as determined by DNA-based NGS assays
Project description:The spontaneous mutation rate is a crucial parameter in molecular evolution which is maintained very low. To better characterize how proofreading activity of the DNA polymerase and Mismatch repair (MMR) which are ubiquitous in all kingdoms of life shape a mutational landscape we built B. subtilis 168-derived strains allowing conditional inactivation of either one or both of these two error reparation mechanisms. In practice, we used an IPTG-inducible promoter to control the expression of mutant alleles selected for their ability to displace by competition their functional counterparts. The first allele, denoted here mutL*, has a mutation in the ATP hydrolysis active site of MutL. The second allele, denoted here polC* encodes an exonuclease-deficient variant of PolC. Fluctuation tests and Mutation Accumulation experiments confirmed extremely high mutation rates, upon IPTG-induction, in the strain that combine these two deficient alleles in a synthetic operon (mutL*//polC*). The purpose of this transcritomic study was to better characterize this inducible system. Analysis of the data did not reveal specific transcriptional responses of the bacterium to IPTG addition and extreme mutations rates.
Project description:The mismatch repair (MMR) family is a highly conserved group of proteins that function in correcting base-base and insertion-deletion mismatches generated during DNA replication. To systematically investigate the mismatch repair pathway, we conducted a proteomic analysis and identified MMR-associated protein complexes using a tandem-affinity purification coupled with mass spectrometry (TAP-MS) method. In total, we identified 262 high-confidence candidate interaction proteins (HCIPs).
Project description:There is mounting evidence that mismatch repair (MMR) proteins are involved in oxidative DNA damage response. SETD2, the histone H3K36 tri-methyltransferase, is a newly found factor participate in MMR pathway in human cells. In this study, we show that SETD2 can directly interact with MMR protein MutSα, and they are enriched and colocalized in chromatin in response to oxidative damage, which maybe the reason for the amplification of H3K36me3. Moreover, MutSα and SETD2 are essential for ATM and CHK2 activation upon H2O2 treatment, loss of SETD2 and MutSα will display impaired DNA damage response and oxidative DNA repair, which will accumulate oxidative damage and lead to more cell apoptosis and cell death. Our finding provided a novel SETD2 dependent mechanism for the oxidative DNA damage response together with MMR protein.