Project description:Excessive Hedgehog signaling in chondrocytes is sufficient to cause formation of enchondroma-like lesions in mice which can progress to chondrosarcoma. To elucidate potential mechanisms through which activation of Hedgehog signaling contributes to cartilage tumor formation, we used chromatin immunoprecipitation and next generation sequencing to identify Gli1 and Gli2 target genes in primary human chondrosarcoma. In silico analyses were conducted to identify and characterize Gli1 and Gli2 binding regions, including de novo motif analysis, co-localization with additional transcription factors, distance to transcriptional start site, conservation between human and mouse, and supervised and unsupervised analyses of biological pathways and processes. Our results profile putative unique and overlapping target genes of Gli1 and Gli2 in chondrosarcoma.
Project description:Despite significant progress in therapy, melanoma is still the most lethal form of skin cancer, with a rising incidence worldwide. Little is known about the impact of deregulated Hedgehog-GLI (HH-GLI) signalling pathway in the progression of this disease. Based on previous research, we hypothesized that in melanoma activation of HH-GLI signaling pathway is non- canonical due to its crosstalk with MAPK signaling pathway, which is the most deregulated pathway in melanoma. In order to investigate the link between the two pathways and to find novel GLI transcriptional targets that could be considered for potential combination therapy, we performed RNA sequencing on three melanoma cell lines with overexpressed GLI1, GLI2 and GLI3 and combined them with results of ChIP sequencing on endogenous GLI1, GLI2 and GLI3 proteins on the same cell lines. RNA-seq revealed a total of 808 DEGs for GLI1, 941 DEGs for GLI2 and 58 DEGs for GLI3. ChIP-seq identified 527 genes that contained GLI1 binding sites in their promoters, 1103 for GLI2 and 553 for GLI3. After combining these results, 21 targets were selected for validation by qPCR. Fifteen of these targets were validated in the tested cell lines, 6 of which were detected by both RNA-seq and ChIP-seq.
Project description:High levels of GLI (GLI1 and GLI2) mRNA and GLI luciferase reporter activity were detected in the androgen independent prostate cancer cell lines DU145 and PC-3 compared to the androgen-dependent LNCaP prostate cancer cell line. Subsequently, we observed that ectopic GLI1 promoted hormone independence in LNCaP cells (LNCaP-GLI1). We compared the gene expression profile of LNCaP-pBP (empty vector), LNCaP-GLI1, DU145, and PC-3 cells globally as well as to identify GLI1-regulated genes that may contribute to hormone independence. RNA was harvested and analysed from LNCap-pBP (control/reference sample), LNCaP-GLI1, DU145 and PC-3 cells
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.
