Project description:Gene expression profiling of immortalized human mesenchymal stem cells with hTERT/E6/E7 transfected MSCs. hTERT may change gene expression in MSCs. Goal was to determine the gene expressions of immortalized MSCs.
Project description:Transcriptional profiling of human mesenchymal stem cells comparing normoxic MSCs cells with hypoxic MSCs cells. Hypoxia may inhibit senescence of MSCs during expansion. Goal was to determine the effects of hypoxia on global MSCs gene expression.
Project description:Vitamin D, a hormone that acts through the nuclear vitamin D receptor (VDR), upregulates anti-tumorigenic microRNA in prostate epithelium. This may contribute to the lower levels of aggressive prostate cancer (PCa) in patients with high serum vitamin D. Expression of other small non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) in prostate epithelium and their potential regulation by vitamin D are uncharacterized. Laser capture microdissection (LCM) followed by small-RNA sequencing was used to identify ncRNA in the prostate epithelium of tissues from a vitamin D-supplementation trial. We compared the expression profiles to small-RNA sequencing data from primary prostate epithelial cells and publically-available benign whole prostate. Application of LCM to isolate epithelium promoted sample homogeneity and captured more diversity in ncRNA species. An abundance of PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) was detected in normal prostate epithelium, which increased under high vitamin D conditions.
Project description:Transcriptional profiling of LNCaP prostate cancer cells comparing control siRNA-treated LNCaP cells with LNCaP cells treated with siRNAs targeting Prostate Cancer Associated Transcript-1 (PCAT1), an uncharacterized long non-coding RNA. High-throughput sequencing of polyA+ RNA (RNA-Seq) in human cancer shows remarkable potential to identify both novel disease-specific markers for clinical uses and uncharacterized aspects of tumor biology, particularly non-coding RNA (ncRNA) species. To illustrate this approach, we employed RNA-Seq on a cohort of 102 prostate tissues and cells lines and found that aberrant expression profiles of novel tissue-specific ncRNAs distinguished benign, cancerous, and metastatic tumors. Among these, a novel prostate-cancer specific ncRNA (termed PCAT-1) defined a subset of aggressive cancers with low expression of the epigenetic regulator EZH2, a component of the Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2) commonly upregulated in metastatic cancers. In vitro assays for core PRC2 genes indicated that the PRC2 complex directly binds and represses PCAT-1, and that the PCAT-1 transcript reciprocally binds PRC2, suggesting a regulatory feedback mechanism. Importantly, knockdown of PCAT-1 in cells with high levels of endogenous PCAT-1 transcript showed changes in cell proliferation and transcriptional regulation of several key biological processes, including cell cycle. Finally, we showed that ncRNA expression signatures, including PCAT-1, were effective for the non-invasive detection of prostate cancer, and that high ncRNA expression signature values correlate with high-grade histology. The findings presented herein establish the utility of RNA-Seq to comprehensively identify unannotated ncRNAs that define human disease states and characterize PCAT-1 as a novel regulator of cell proliferation mechanistically linked to PRC2 and contributory to translational clinical tests for prostate cancer. Two-condition experiment: Control-siRNA-treated versus PCAT1-siRNA-treated LNCaP cells. Biological replicates: 3 control replicates, 3 treatment replicates.