Many lines of evidence have suggested that estrogen plays important roles not only in the initiation and proliferation of breast cancer, but also in cancer metastasis. However, the mechanistic basis of the latter events is poorly understood. In addition, recent studies have suggested that myocardin-related transcription factor A (MRTF-A) might be related to cancer metastasis. However, as reports are contradictory, certain of its roles still remain confusing. In the present study, we showed that excessive 17b-estradiol could promote the migration of MCF-7 breast cancer cells and up-regulate the expression of MRTF-A, myosin regulatory light chain 9 (MYL9), and cysteine-rich angiogenic inducer 61 (CYR61). Overexpression of MRTF-A significantly promoted the migration of MCF-7 cells through its transactivation effects on MYL9 and CYR61 genes, while RNA interference-mediated knockdown of MRTF-A strongly inhibited transcription and expression of the target genes and reduced the migration ability of MCF-7 cells. These results provided novel evidence supporting the metastasispromoting functions of MRTF-A, and implied that MRTF-A might be a switch for the estrogen pathway to change its proliferation-promoting roles into migration-stimulating roles in breast cancer.
Hawthorn is a berry-like fruit from the species of Crataegus. In China, it has another more famous name, Shan-Zha, which has been used to improve digestion as a traditional Chinese medicine or food for thousands of years. Moreover, during the last decades, hawthorn has received more attention because of its potential to treat cardiovascular diseases. However, currently, only fruits of C. pinnatifida and C. pinnatifida var. major are included as Shan-Zha in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia. In this study, our results showed that the ethanol extract of Zhongtian hawthorn, a novel grafted cultivar of C. cuneata (wild Shan-Zha), could markedly reduce body weight and levels of serum total cholesterol, triglyceride, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and liver cholesterol of hyperlipidemia mice. It could suppress the stimulation effect of high-fat diet on the transcription of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA reductase (HMGCR) and p65, and counteract the downregulation of CYP7A1 and LDLR. In addition, the results of luciferase reporter assay and Western blot showed that the transcriptional activity of HMGCR promoter was inhibited by Zhongtian hawthorn ethanol extract in a dose-dependent manner, while overexpression of p65 could reverse this transcriptional repression effect. These results suggested that Zhongtian hawthorn could provide health benefits by counteracting the highfat diet-induced hypercholesteolemic and hyperlipidemic effects in vivo, and the mechanism underlying this event was mainly dependent on the suppressive effect of Zhongtian hawthorn ethanol extract on the transcription of HMGCR via nuclear factorkappa B (NF-jB) signal pathway. Therefore, this novel cultivar of hawthorn cultivar which has much bigger fruits, early bearing, high yield, cold resistance, and drought resistance, might be considered as a good alternative to Shan-Zha and has great value in the food and medicine industry. In addition, to our best knowledge, this is also the first report that the extract of Crataegus could suppress the transcription of HMGCR via NF-jB signal pathway.
Abstract. SET and MYND domain containing 3 (SMYD3) is a histone methyltransferase (HMT) and transcription factor, which serves important roles in carcinogenesis. Numerous downstream target genes of SMYD3 have been identified in previous studies. However, the downstream microRNA (miRNA) s regulated by SMYD3 are yet to be elucidated. In the present study, the results of miRNA microarray demonstrated that 30 miRNA expression profiles were upregulated, whilst 24 miRNAs were downregulated by >2.0-fold in the SMYD3-overexpressed MCF-7 breast cancer cells. The HMT activity was demonstrated to be essential for SMYD3-mediated transactivation of miR-200c-3p and the overexpression of miR-200c-3p inhibited the transactivation effects of SMYD3 on myocardin-related transcription factor-A-dependent migration-associated genes. To our best knowledge, the current study is the first to report on the transcriptional regulation of SMYD3 on miRNAs, and miR-200c may be a downstream negative regulator of the SMYD3-mediated pathway in the migration of breast cancer cells. These results may provide a novel theoretical basis to understand the mechanisms underlying the initiation, progression, diagnosis, prevention and therapy of breast cancer. IntroductionSET and MYND domain containing 3 (SMYD3) is a novel histone methyltransferase gene identified in hepatoma and colon carcinoma cells by Hamamoto et al (1). SMYD3 is located on human chromosome 1 and encodes two protein isoforms that are composed of 428 and 369 amino acids. Previous studies have demonstrated that SMYD3 is frequently overexpressed in numerous types of cancer cells, including hepatic, colon, gastric and cervical carcinoma, and breast cancer (2-4), whilst the expression levels were lower in the corresponding normal tissue. A number of previous studies have demonstrated that SMYD3 has vital roles in the process of tumor development via its functions as a histone methylation enzyme and a transcription factor (5,6). SMYD3 modifies chromatin structure by catalyzing the methylation of histone H3 at lysine 4 (H3K4), H4K20 and H4K5 (5,6). Also, SMYD3 regulates the transcription of target genes via associating with RNA polymerase II or HELZ RNA helicase and binding at the motif CCCTCC or GGAGGG in the promoter (1).MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, non-coding, endogenous RNA molecules of 18-22 nucleotides that were first identified in Caenorhabditis elegans. miRNAs suppress gene expression by binding the targeted mRNA transcripts, which causes translational repression or mRNA degradation. Previous studies demonstrated that miRNAs serve important roles in tumorigenesis through the regulation of genes involved in cancer development and maintenance (7,8).A number of studies have identified that histone methylation and miRNAs are essential in the initiation and progression of cancer (7-9). However, the association between SMYD3 and miRNAs is yet to be elucidated. To investigate this further, the current study analyzed the global regulatory effects of SMYD3 on miRNAs in breast cancer cells usi...
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