1. TGF-β-induced MIR99AHG synergizes with PTBP1 to trigger a splicing switch of SMARCA1 that promotes invadopodia formation for metastasis in colorectal cancer
- Author
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Danxiu Li, Xin Wang, Hui Miao, Hao Liu, Maogui Pang, Hao Guo, Minghui Ge, Sarah E. Glass, Stephan Emmrich, Songtao Ji, Xiaoni Ye, Jing Wang, Qi Liu, Taewan Kim, Jan-Henning Klusmann, Cunxi Li, Yongzhan Nie, Kaichun Wu, Daiming Fan, Xu Song, Xing Wang, Ling Li, Yuanyuan Lu, and Xiaodi Zhao
- Abstract
Alternative splicing (AS) of pre-mRNAs is an essential process that regulates gene expression and functional diversity, yet the underlying regulatory mechanisms that control this process during cancer metastasis are not clear. Here, we uncovered that a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA), MIR99AHG, mediates regulation of AS to alter chromatin remodeler function and promote invadopodia formation in colorectal cancer (CRC). We found that MIR99AHG is highly expressed in metastatic CRC cells and patient tissue samples. In vitro and in vivo assays showed that MIR99AHG potently drove CRC cell motility, invasion, and metastasis. MIR99AHG bound to and stabilized the RNA splicing factor PTBP1, which cooperatively increased cassette exon inclusion of the chromatin remodeling gene SMARCA1. Mechanistically, MIR99AHG acted as an address label for PTBP1 to fine-tune its binding pattern on SMARCA1 pre-mRNA, thereby controlling the skipping-to-inclusion splicing switch of SMARCA1 and favouring the production of a long isoform (SMARCA1-L). Canonical SMARCA1 was found to suppress cell migration and invasiveness by inhibiting invadopodia formation, but SMARCA1-L was functionally inert. Clinicaldata revealed that MIR99AHG was positively correlated with PTBP1 and SMARCA1-L in human CRC specimens and predicted patient outcome. Furthermore, we showed that the crosstalk with cancer-associated fibroblasts triggers TGF-β/SAMD signalling in CRC cells and activates MIR99AHG expression. Our findings establish a novel mechanism for a lncRNA that interacts with PTBP1 to regulate AS process, providing a potential therapeutic target and predictive biomarker of CRC.
- Published
- 2022
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