INIBIOLP   05426
INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES BIOQUIMICAS DE LA PLATA "PROF. DR. RODOLFO R. BRENNER"
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
GPAT2 expression modifies piRNA length distribution in human MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells
Autor/es:
MONTANARO, MA; SALVATI, ANNAMARIA; LACUNZA, E; MEMOLI, DOMENICO; HENNING, MF; GUILLOU, H; RIZZO, F; WEISZ, A; PELLON MAISON, M
Lugar:
Heidelberg
Reunión:
Simposio; The Non-Coding Genome; 2015
Institución organizadora:
EMBL
Resumen:
Glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferase 2 (GPAT2) was cloned as a novel member of the acyltransferase family of genes and, in contrast to the other GPATs that are mainly expressed in lipidogenic tissues, GPAT2 is highly expressed in testis. Recently, murine Gpat2 was involved in primary piRNA biogenesis because it was found to physically interact with MILI in germ stem cells. Moreover, Gpat2 knock-down was able to impaired piRNA production in mouse GS cells. Although GPAT2 expression is tissue-selective, the gene is overexpressed in some cancers, and we have demonstrated that GPAT2 expression contributes to tumor phenotype of MDA-MB-231 cells. Here, we asked whether GPAT2 contributes to piRNA biogenesis in MDA-MB-231 cells. RNAseq experiments were performed in GPAT2 knocked-down and control MDA-MB-231 cells. Although total piRNA content did not change by GPAT2 silencing, piRNA length distribution was modified. Whereas the percentage of piRNAs of 26 and 27 nt in length was significantly decreased, the percentage of piRNAs of 28 and 29 nt showed a significant augmentation. Additionally, GPAT2 silencing produced 53 differentially expressed piRNAs (p-value ≤0.05 and |fold change (FC)| ≥1.5). Interestingly, 90% of down-regulated elements were multiple copy piRNAs, and very importantly, two of the up-regulated piRNAs in GPAT2 silenced cells (DQ597341; DQ598183) have been reported among the most characteristically down-regulated piRNAs in clinical tumor breast cancer samples compared to healthy tissue. Taking into account that an association between each PIWI protein and piRNAs of a certain length has been described, the selective change in piRNAs length distribution upon GPAT2 silencing may be the result of a specific interaction between GPAT2 and a human member of the PIWI family of proteins suggesting a role of GPAT2 in piRNA processing