Project description:Ets-4 was previously identified as a suppressor of rege-1(rrr13) phenotype. The goal of this experiment was to identify down-stream regulators of ETS-4, which facilitate this suppression.
Project description:Chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled with microarray analysis (ChIP-chip) was carried out to identify new target genes for ETS-domain transcription factor Elk-1. Experiment was done in Hela cells under serum starved conditions.
Project description:<p>Half of prostate cancers harbor gene fusions between <i>TMPRSS2</i> and members of the <i>ETS</i> transcription factor family. To date little is known about the presence of non-ETS fusion events in prostate cancer. We employed next-generation transcriptome sequencing (RNA-Seq) in order to explore the whole transcriptome of 25 human prostate cancer samples for the presence of chimeric fusion transcripts. We generated more than 1 billion sequence reads and used a novel computational approach (FusionSeq) in order to identify novel gene fusion candidates with high confidence. In total, we discovered and characterized seven new cancer-specific gene fusions, two involving the ETS genes <i>ETV1</i> and <i>ERG</i>, and five involving non-ETS genes such as <i>CDKN1A</i> (p21), <i>CD9</i> and <i>IKBKB</i> (IKK-beta), genes known to exhibit key biological roles in cellular homeostasis or assumed to be critical in tumorigenesis of other tumor entities, as well as the oncogene PIGU and the tumor suppressor gene <i>RSRC2</i>. The novel gene fusions are found to be of low frequency but interestingly, the non-ETS fusions were all present in prostate cancer harboring the <i>TMPRSS2-ERG</i> gene fusion. Future work will focus on determining if the ETS rearrangements in prostate cancer are associated or directly predispose to a rearrangement prone phenotype.</p>
Project description:Deregulated expression of ETS transcription factors with oncogenic and tumor suppressor function occurs frequently in prostate cancer leading to profound alterations of the cancer transcriptome. By integrating genomic and functional studies we identified key targets of the aberrantly expressed ETS factors, ERG and ESE3. Altered expression of ETS factors led to the induction of the polycomb group protein EZH2 and silencing of the tumor suppressor Nkx3.1. Nkx3.1 was controlled by ERG and ESE3 both directly via binding to ETS binding sites in the gene promoter and indirectly via EZH2-induced histone H3K27 methylation. This may represent a general mechanism linking aberrantly expressed ETS with deregulation of epigenetic pathways and global reprogramming of the prostate epithelial cell transcriptome in prostate tumorigenesis. Keywords: prostate cancer, gene expression profiling, ETS genes In this study we show that deregulated expression of ETS factors with opposite functions is highly frequent in prostate cancer. Our study uncovers a previously unrecognized link between aberrant expression of ETS factors, deregulation of epigenetic pathways and silencing of tumor suppressor genes in prostate cancer and shows that partially distinct transcriptional programs are associated with different ETS gene expression patterns. The presence of distinct prostate cancer subgroups with different biological features may have important clinical implications and suggests that assessment of ETS expression levels might be useful to distinguish tumors with different clinical outcome.
Project description:Deregulated expression of ETS transcription factors with oncogenic and tumor suppressor function occurs frequently in prostate cancer leading to profound alterations of the cancer transcriptome. By integrating genomic and functional studies we identified key targets of the aberrantly expressed ETS factors, ERG and ESE3. Altered expression of ETS factors led to the induction of the polycomb group protein EZH2 and silencing of the tumor suppressor Nkx3.1. Nkx3.1 was controlled by ERG and ESE3 both directly via binding to ETS binding sites in the gene promoter and indirectly via EZH2-induced histone H3K27 methylation. This may represent a general mechanism linking aberrantly expressed ETS with deregulation of epigenetic pathways and global reprogramming of the prostate epithelial cell transcriptome in prostate tumorigenesis. Keywords: prostate cancer, gene expression profiling, ETS genes