Project description:AEG-1 is overexpressed in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and positively regulates development and progression of HCC A transgenic mouse with hepatocyte-specific expression of human AEG-1 was generated using mouse albumin promoter/enhancer in B6/CBA background.
Project description:AEG-1 is overexpressed in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and positively regulates development and progression of HCC A transgenic mouse with hepatocyte-specific expression of human AEG-1 was generated using mouse albumin promoter/enhancer in B6/CBA background. Hepatocytes were isolated from WT and Alb/AEG-1 mice for RNA extraction and Affymetrix microarray hybridization.
Project description:Transgenic mice (n= 40) overexpressing FEAT in the thymus, spleen, liver, and lung developed malignant lymphoma (47.5%, 19/40) and liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma, HCC) (35%, 14/40). Notably, HCC arose in half (13/26) of the male transgenic mice, indicating a strong male predilection similar to human HCC. Microarray-based comparative genomic hybridization (array-CGH) suggested that HCC in FEAT transgenic mice recapitulates human hepatocarcinogenesis.
Project description:Introgressed variants from other species can be an important source of genetic variation because they may arise rapidly, can include multiple mutations on a single haplotype, and have often been pretested by selection in the species of origin. Although introgressed alleles are generally deleterious, several studies have reported introgression as the source of adaptive alleles-including the rodenticide-resistant variant of Vkorc1 that introgressed from Mus spretus into European populations of Mus musculus domesticus. Here, we conducted bidirectional genome scans to characterize introgressed regions into one wild population of M. spretus from Spain and three wild populations of M. m. domesticus from France, Germany, and Iran. Despite the fact that these species show considerable intrinsic postzygotic reproductive isolation, introgression was observed in all individuals, including in the M. musculus reference genome (GRCm38). Mus spretus individuals had a greater proportion of introgression compared with M. m. domesticus, and within M. m. domesticus, the proportion of introgression decreased with geographic distance from the area of sympatry. Introgression was observed on all autosomes for both species, but not on the X-chromosome in M. m. domesticus, consistent with known X-linked hybrid sterility and inviability genes that have been mapped to the M. spretus X-chromosome. Tract lengths were generally short with a few outliers of up to 2.7 Mb. Interestingly, the longest introgressed tracts were in olfactory receptor regions, and introgressed tracts were significantly enriched for olfactory receptor genes in both species, suggesting that introgression may be a source of functional novelty even between species with high barriers to gene flow.
