Contribution of nuclear actin to transcription regulation

Actin, an integral component of the cytoskeleton, plays crucial roles in a variety of cell functions, including cell migration, adhesion, polarity and shape change. Studies performed during the last couple of decades have revealed that the actin also exists in the nucleus. However, the function and properties of nuclear actin remained elusive so far. Recently, we showed that an actin tagged with EYFP and fused with a nuclear localization signal (EYFP-NLS-actin) formed visible filamentous (F)-actin bundles in cells. To obtain further details about the individual genes that are affected by the nuclear actin, we have used the microarray analysis to determine the changes in the expression levels of RNAs in HeLa cells as a result of EYFP-NLS-actin expression. Our results suggest that the nuclear actin plays a role in the activation of genes rather than their repression. The data has been deposited in the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database under the accession number GSE59799.