Project description:MicroRNAs (miRNAs or miRs) are small, noncoding RNAs that are implicated in the regulation of nearly all biological processes. Global miRNA biogenesis is altered in many cancers and RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) have been shown to play a role in this process, presenting a promising avenue for targeting miRNA dysregulation in disease. miR-34a exhibits tumor-suppressive functions by targeting cell cycle regulators CDK4/6 and anti-apoptotic factor Bcl-2, among other regulatory pathways such as Wnt, TGF-, and Notch signaling. Many cancers show downregulation or loss of miR-34a, and synthetic miR-34a supplementation has been shown to inhibit tumor growth in vivo; however, the post-transcriptional mechanisms by which miR-34a is lost in cancer are not entirely understood. Here, we have used a proteomics-mediated approach to identify Squamous cell carcinoma antigen recognized by T-cells 3 (SART3) as a putative pre-miR-34a-binding protein. SART3 is a spliceosome recycling factor and nuclear RBP with no previously reported role in miRNA regulation. We demonstrate that SART3 binds pre-miR-34a with specificity over pre-let-7d and begin to elucidate a new functional role for this protein in non-small lung cancer cells. Overexpression of SART3 led to increased miR-34a levels, downregulation of the miR-34a target genes CDK4 and CDK6, and cell cycle arrest in the G1 phase. In vitro binding studies showed that the RNA-recognition motifs within the SART3 sequence are responsible for selective pre-miR-34a binding. Collectively, our results present evidence for an influential role of SART3 in miR-34a biogenesis and cell cycle progression.
Project description:SILAC based protein correlation profiling using size exclusion of protein complexes derived from Mus musculus tissues (Heart, Liver, Lung, Kidney, Skeletal Muscle, Thymus)
Project description:SILAC based protein correlation profiling using size exclusion of protein complexes derived from seven Mus musculus tissues (Heart, Brain, Liver, Lung, Kidney, Skeletal Muscle, Thymus)
Project description:Analysis NCI-H1299 lung cancer cells transfected with synthetic oligo mimics for microRNAs (miRNAs) miR-34a and ghR-34a. We developed a 30-nucleotide single-strand RNA (ssRNA), termed “guide hairpin RNA (ghR),” that has a physiological function similar to that of miRNA and siRNA. The ghR caused no innate cytokine response either in vitro or in vivo. In addition, its structure does not contain a passenger strand seed sequence, reducing the potential for off-target effects relative to existing short RNA reagents. Systemic injection of ghR-form miR-34a (ghR-34a) suppressed tumor growth in a mouse model of RAS-induced lung cancer. Furthermore, ghR-34a functioned in a Dicer- and Ago2-independent manner. This novel RNAi technology may provide a novel, safe, and effective nucleic acid drug platform that will increase the clinical usefulness of nucleic acid therapy. MiR-34a–targeted mRNAs regulated by mRNA degradation rather than translational inhibition were identified using microarray data from miR-34 and ghR-34a transfectants.
Project description:To identify potential targets of miR-34a, we performed transcriptional profiling on proneural TS543 GBM cells, focusing on mRNAs whose levels decreased in response to miR-34a transfection as compared to control oligonucleotide.
Project description:Analysis NCI-H1299 lung cancer cells transfected with synthetic oligo mimics for microRNAs (miRNAs) miR-34a and ghR-34a. We developed a 30-nucleotide single-strand RNA (ssRNA), termed “guide hairpin RNA (ghR),” that has a physiological function similar to that of miRNA and siRNA. The ghR caused no innate cytokine response either in vitro or in vivo. In addition, its structure does not contain a passenger strand seed sequence, reducing the potential for off-target effects relative to existing short RNA reagents. Systemic injection of ghR-form miR-34a (ghR-34a) suppressed tumor growth in a mouse model of RAS-induced lung cancer. Furthermore, ghR-34a functioned in a Dicer- and Ago2-independent manner. This novel RNAi technology may provide a novel, safe, and effective nucleic acid drug platform that will increase the clinical usefulness of nucleic acid therapy.
Project description:Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS) is a disorder due to inherited mutations in the TP53 gene resulting in an increased risk of developing several types of cancer. MicroRNA miR-34a has been implicated downstream of p53 on the basis of being a direct transcriptional target and, when over-expressed, having pro-apoptotic phenotypes in cell lines. Moreover, miR-34a has been shown to be a modifier gene in the context of LFS, since its epigenetic silencing increases the likelihood of tumour development in patients with mutant TP53. However, the in vivo consequences of miR-34 loss are still unclear. For example, mice lacking all three (a,b,c) miR-34 homologs show no detectable abnormalities in p53 responses. The relative expression of different miR-34 genes in zebrafish was studied using qRT-PCR with specific assays. The miR-34a, miR-34b and miR-34c display unique onset of developmental expression and expression levels, with miR-34a being the most abundant and constant in expression. All of the miR-34 genes also showed clear induction by p53 when DNA-damaging treatments are performed. Using CRISPR-Cas9 technology, we generated a zebrafish miR-34a deletion mutant to further investigate the roles of miR-34a on its own and its association with the p53 pathway. Predictably, a miR-34a deletion mutant demonstrated absence of miR-34a, though without miR-34b and miR-34c compensation beyond baseline expression levels. Mutants survive to adulthood, show no overt phenotypes and have normal apoptotic responses to DNA-damaging irradiation or camptothecin treatments. To further explore the effects of miR-34a, we performed gene expression profiling using RNA-seq of wild-type and miR-34a deletion mutant zebrafish embryos at 8 hpf. This experiment was motivated by a previous report knock-down of miR-34a in zebrafish leads to dramatic increases in expression of miR-34a target genes. We therefore expected that this experiment will help define the set of miR-34a target genes. The results of this RNA-seq experiment showed that the loss of miR-34a led to large transcriptomic effects at 8 hpf (1573 genes UP and 1679 genes DOWN at 1.5-fold change and FDR < 0.05). There was no significant enrichment of predicted miR-34a target genes among the differentially regulated genes but some interesting biological trends were found and will be described in the paper associated with this dataset.
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.