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Adrenergic α2C receptor (ADRA2C) is an inhibitory modulator of the sympathetic nervous system. Knockout mice for this gene show physiological and behavioural alterations that are associated with the fight-or-flight response. There is evidence of positive selection on the regulation of this gene during chicken domestication. Here, we find that the neuronal expression of ADRA2C is lower in human and chimpanzee than in other primates. On the basis of three-dimensional chromatin structure, we identified a cis-regulatory region whose DNA sequences have been significantly accelerated in human and chimpanzee. Active histone modification marks this region in rhesus macaque but not in human and chimpanzee; instead, repressive marks are enriched in various human brain samples. This region contains two neuron-restrictive silencer factor (NRSF) binding motifs, each of which harbours a polymorphism. Our genotyping and analysis of population genome data indicate that at both polymorphic sites, the derived allele has reached fixation in humans and chimpanzees but not in bonobos, whereas only the ancestral allele is present among macaques. Our CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing and reporter assays show that both derived nucleotides repress ADRA2C, most likely by increasing NRSF binding. In addition, we detected signatures of recent positive selection for lower neuronal ADRA2C expression in humans. Our findings indicate that there has been selective pressure for enhanced sympathetic nervous activity in the evolution of humans and chimpanzees.

Simple Summary: Lung adenocarcinoma is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths. Even though advanced anticancer drugs are available, prognosis of patients with lung cancer is dismal and there is an urgent need to explore novel oncogenic mechanisms to overcome these therapeutic limitations. GPR87 is upregulated in various cancers, but its biological function has not yet been established in lung cancer. Here, we discovered that GPR87 is upregulated in lung adenocarcinoma and overexpressed GPR87 contributes to poor prognosis in patients with lung adenocarcinoma. We used GPR87-overexpressing and GPR87-silenced lung adonocarcinoma cell lines, along with in vivo studies, to demonstrate that overexpression of GPR87 promoted invasiveness and metastasis of lung adenocarcinoma cells. Our study identified the AKT-eNOS-NO signaling axis to be the mechanism by which GPR87 exerted its oncogenic function. Lung adenocarcinoma is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths. Despite the availability of advanced anticancer drugs for lung cancer treatment, the prognosis of patients still remains poor. There is a need to explore novel oncogenic mechanisms to overcome these therapeutic limitations. The functional experiments in vitro and in vivo were performed to evaluate the role of GPR87 expression on lung adenocarcinoma metastasis. The public lung adenocarcinoma dataset was used to determine the clinical relevance of GPR87 expression in patients with lung adenocarcinoma. GPR87 is upregulated in various cancer; however, the biological function of GPR87 has not yet been established in lung adenocarcinoma. In this study, we found that GPR87 expression is upregulated in lung adenocarcinoma and is associated with poor patient prognosis. Additionally, we showed that GPR87 overexpression promotes invasiveness and metastasis of lung adenocarcinoma cells. Furthermore, we demonstrated that AKT-eNOS-NO signaling is a novel downstream pathway of GPR87 in lung adenocarcinoma. Conversely, we confirmed that silencing of GPR87 expression suppressed these phenotypes. Our results reveal the oncogenic function of GPR87 in cancer progression and metastasis through the activation of eNOS as a key mediator. Therefore, we propose that targeting eNOS could be a novel therapeutic strategy to improve the clinical treatment of lung adenocarcinoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Radiation-induced autophagy has been shown to play two different roles, in malignant glioma (MG) cells, cytocidal or cytoprotective. However, neither the role of radiation-induced autophagy for cell death nor the existence of autophagy-induced apoptosis, a well-known cell-death pathway after irradiation, has been verified yet., Materials and Methods: We observed both temporal and dose-dependent response patterns of autophagy and apoptosis to radiation in MG cell lines. Additionally, we investigated the role of autophagy in apoptosis through knockdown of autophagy-related proteins., Results: Autophagic activity measured by staining of acidic vesicle organelles and Western blotting of LC-3 protein increased in proportion to radiation dose from day 1 to 5 after irradiation. Apoptosis measured by annexin-V staining and Western blotting of cleaved poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase demonstrated relatively late appearance 3 days after irradiation that increased for up to 7 days. Blocking of pan-caspase (Z-VAD-FMK) did not affect apoptosis after irradiation, but silencing of Atg5 effectively reduced radiation-induced autophagy, which decreased apoptosis significantly. Inhibition of autophagy in Atg5 knockdown cells was shown to be beneficial for cell survival. Stable transfection of GFP-LC3 cells was observed after irradiation. Annexin-V was localized in cells bearing GFP-LC3 punctuated spots, indicating autophagy in immunofluorescence. Some of these punctuated GFP-LC3 bearing cells formed conglomerated spots and died in final phase., Conclusion: These findings suggest that autophagy appears earlier than apoptosis after irradiation and that a portion of the apoptotic population that appears later is autophagy-dependent. Thus, autophagy is a pathway to cell death after irradiation of MG cells.

With improvements in systemic control, metastasis to the brain has been more frequently found in patients with breast cancer. In order to gain access to the brain, breast cancer cells must overcome the blood-brain barrier (BBB), a highly selective filter against cellular and soluble substances. Human brain endothelial cells (HBECs) comprise a major element of the BBB, and breast cancer cells first encounter and pass through them for extravasation. To date, however, the precise role of HBECs in metastasis to the brain is unknown. In this study, we examined how HBECs take part in the extravasation process. In an established in vitro model of the BBB, unexpectedly, the transmigration of breast cancer cells was markedly enhanced in the presence of HBECs than in their absence, suggesting that HBECs facilitate the transmigration of breast cancer cells rather than acting as a barrier against them. We then showed that cyclooxygenase (COX-2) induced from HBECs rather than that from breast cancer cells plays a key role in the transmigration. Moreover, expression of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP-2) mediating the transmigration was induced in HBECs by COX-2 after co-culture with breast cancer cells. Taken together, our results suggest that COX-2 and MMP-2 produced from HBECs facilitate the extravasation of breast cancer cells across the BBB.

We have developed a novel, high-throughput approach to collecting randomly perturbed gene-expression profiles from the human genome.A human 293 cell library that stably expresses randomly chosen zinc-finger transcription factors was constructed, and the expression profile of each cell line was obtained using cDNA microarray technology.Gene expression profiles from a total of 132 cell lines were collected and analyzed by (1) a simple clustering method based on expression-profile similarity, and (2) the shortest-path analysis method. These analyses identified a number of gene groups, and further investigation revealed that the genes that were grouped together had close biological relationships. The artificial transcription factor-based random genome perturbation method thus provides a novel functional genomic tool for annotation and classification of genes in the human genome and those of many other organisms.