1. PRMT5-dependent transcriptional repression of c-Myc target genes promotes gastric cancer progression
- Author
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Yugen Chen, Qixiang Li, Jingru Ge, Zenong Yu, Tao Gui, Junyi Ju, Xinyu Li, Peipei Xu, Lingling Ma, Dongjun Yang, Ming Liu, Quan Zhao, Jiahuang Li, Bing Yao, Ying Wang, Yexuan Deng, Xiao-Bin Wu, Bing Chen, Xiangwei Zeng, Ruifeng Hu, and Chan Guo
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Protein-Arginine N-Methyltransferases ,Gene Expression ,Medicine (miscellaneous) ,Adenocarcinoma ,medicine.disease_cause ,Methylation ,Proto-Oncogene Mas ,Histones ,Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-myc ,Histone H4 ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Stomach Neoplasms ,Histone arginine methylation ,Cell Line, Tumor ,Gene expression ,medicine ,Humans ,PTEN ,Promoter Regions, Genetic ,Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics (miscellaneous) ,biology ,gastric cancer ,Protein arginine methyltransferase 5 ,Promoter ,histone arginine methylation ,Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic ,tumorigenesis ,c-Myc ,030104 developmental biology ,030220 oncology & carcinogenesis ,Disease Progression ,biology.protein ,Cancer research ,PRMT5 ,Carcinogenesis ,Chromatin immunoprecipitation ,Research Paper - Abstract
The proto-oncogene c-Myc regulates multiple biological processes mainly through selectively activating gene expression. However, the mechanisms underlying c-Myc-mediated gene repression in the context of cancer remain less clear. This study aimed to clarify the role of PRMT5 in the transcriptional repression of c-Myc target genes in gastric cancer. Methods: Immunohistochemistry was used to evaluate the expression of PRMT5, c-Myc and target genes in gastric cancer patients. PRMT5 and c-Myc interaction was assessed by immunofluorescence, co-immunoprecipitation and GST pull-down assays. Bioinformatics analysis, immunoblotting, real-time PCR, chromatin immunoprecipitation, and rescue experiments were used to evaluate the mechanism. Results: We found that c-Myc directly interacts with protein arginine methyltransferase 5 (PRMT5) to transcriptionally repress the expression of a cohort of genes, including PTEN, CDKN2C (p18INK4C), CDKN1A (p21CIP1/WAF1), CDKN1C (p57KIP2) and p63, to promote gastric cancer cell growth. Specifically, we found that PRMT5 was required to promote gastric cancer cell growth in vitro and in vivo, and for transcriptional repression of this cohort of genes, which was dependent on its methyltransferase activity. Consistently, the promoters of this gene cohort were enriched for both PRMT5-mediated symmetric di-methylation of histone H4 on Arg 3 (H4R3me2s) and c-Myc, and c-Myc depletion also upregulated their expression. H4R3me2s also colocalized with the c-Myc-binding E-box motif (CANNTG) on these genes. We show that PRMT5 directly binds to c-Myc, and this binding is required for transcriptional repression of the target genes. Both c-Myc and PRMT5 expression levels were upregulated in primary human gastric cancer tissues, and their expression levels inversely correlated with clinical outcomes. Conclusions: Taken together, our study reveals a novel mechanism by which PRMT5-dependent transcriptional repression of c-Myc target genes is required for gastric cancer progression, and provides a potential new strategy for therapeutic targeting of gastric cancer.
- Published
- 2020