Project description:Following the removal of implanted mammary tumors, nude mice develop multiple-organ metastases at late stage. The metastases may originate from the primary tumors before the resection surgery, or alternatively, from some established metastases. By multiple approaches, we have proved that bone environment could invigorate cancer cells for further dissemination. this study aims to examine if metastatic dissemination from bone to other sites occurs in natural setting of metastatic spread. We herein apply the rapidly evolving barcode system using homing guide RNA/Cas9 to trace the metastases formation in mouse. hgRNA/Cas9 is a self-targeting Crispr system which allows the mutation occurs in the DNA sequence of guide RNA. Tumor cells wer labelled with doxycycline inducible evolving barcoding system. Upon doxycycline treatment the DNA sequence of hgRNA accumulate mutations with time. The diversity of barcodes in each lesion can infer the timeing of seeding while the mutation patterns of barcodes suggest the phylogenetic correlation of metastases. Several findings were made on this study. First, at the terminal stage, multi-organ metastases are not genetically grouped according to sites of metastases. Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF) analysis of mutant barcodes suggested the early disseminated metastases, which have highest level of Shannon entropy, were featured with a common cluster of mutant barcodes irrespective of their locations. Second, most metastases are potentially multiclonal as indicated by multiple clusters of independent mutant barcodes. Third, when we use Shannon entropy as an index of metastasis age , putative parent-child relationship between metastases with unique mutant barcodes clearly exemplified secondary metastatic seeding from bone to other organs. Finally, we did not observe a clear correlation between tumor burden and Shannon entropy across different metastases, suggesting that putative parental metastases might remain small after seeding further metastases.
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:We have sequenced miRNA libraries from human embryonic, neural and foetal mesenchymal stem cells. We report that the majority of miRNA genes encode mature isomers that vary in size by one or more bases at the 3’ and/or 5’ end of the miRNA. Northern blotting for individual miRNAs showed that the proportions of isomiRs expressed by a single miRNA gene often differ between cell and tissue types. IsomiRs were readily co-immunoprecipitated with Argonaute proteins in vivo and were active in luciferase assays, indicating that they are functional. Bioinformatics analysis predicts substantial differences in targeting between miRNAs with minor 5’ differences and in support of this we report that a 5’ isomiR-9-1 gained the ability to inhibit the expression of DNMT3B and NCAM2 but lost the ability to inhibit CDH1 in vitro. This result was confirmed by the use of isomiR-specific sponges. Our analysis of the miRGator database indicates that a small percentage of human miRNA genes express isomiRs as the dominant transcript in certain cell types and analysis of miRBase shows that 5’ isomiRs have replaced canonical miRNAs many times during evolution. This strongly indicates that isomiRs are of functional importance and have contributed to the evolution of miRNA genes