HUMAN PAPILLOMAVIRUSES AND CERVICAL CANCERHuman papillomaviruses (HPVs) are small, double-stranded DNA viruses that infect cutaneous and mucosal epithelial tissues of the anogenital tract, the hands, or the feet. A subset of HPV types are the causative agents of cervical cancer, since 99% of tumors are positive for HPV DNA (150). To date, over 100 different viral types have been identified, and about onethird of these infect epithelial cells in the genital tract. The viral types that infect the genital tract fall into two categories: high risk and low risk. The high-risk types are associated with the development of anogenital cancers including those of the cervix, while infections by the low-risk HPVs induce only benign genital warts. The high-risk types include HPV-16, HPV-18, HPV-31, HPV-33, and HPV-45, while the low-risk types are HPV-6 and HPV-11. HPVs that infect the genital tract are sexually transmitted, and it is estimated that about two-thirds of individuals who have sexual relations with an infected partner will themselves become infected. However, the majority of infections are subclinical (137). Infection by high-risk HPVs is not limited to the genital tract, since approximately 20% of cancers of the oropharynx contain DNA from these HPV types (61).Infection of the genital tract by HPVs can initially result in low-grade lesions termed dysplasias or cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade I. These lesions exhibit only mildly altered patterns of differentiation, and many of them are cleared by the immune system in less than a year (62, 71). The mechanisms by which the cellular immune response clears HPV infections are still not clearly understood. Some of these lesions, however, are not cleared by the immune system and can persist for periods as long as several decades. Persistence of infection by high-risk HPV types is the greatest risk factor for development of genital malignancies such as squamous cell carcinoma or, less commonly, adenocarcinoma of the cervix (161). Cervical cancer is the second most prevalent cancer worldwide and is the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths in women (120,124). Approximately 470,000 new cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed yearly, with the mean age for the development of malignancy being 52 years (8, 124). Risk factors for tumor development include persistent infection with high-risk viral types, a large number of lifetime sexual partners, coinfection with human immunodeficiency virus, immunosuppression, and cigarette smoking (81). Most cases of cervical cancer are found outside of the United States and Western Europe. In the United States, the number of cases of cervical cancer has declined by over 80% in the last 50 years due to the implementation of the Pap smear as a diagnostic (137). While the number of cases has significantly decreased, approximately 10,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and 5,000 die of this disease annually (120). HUMAN PAPILLOMAVIRUS LIFE CYCLEHPVs are nonenveloped viruses with icosahedral capsids that replicate their genomes wi...

Chromosome instability (CIN) is a common feature of tumor cells. By monitoring chromosome segregation, we show that depletion of the retinoblastoma protein (pRB) causes rates of missegregation comparable with those seen in CIN tumor cells. The retinoblastoma tumor suppressor is frequently inactivated in human cancers and is best known for its regulation of the G1/S-phase transition. Recent studies have shown that pRB inactivation also slows mitotic progression and promotes aneuploidy, but reasons for these phenotypes are not well understood. Here we describe the underlying mitotic defects of pRB-deficient cells that cause chromosome missegregation. Analysis of mitotic cells reveals that pRB depletion compromises centromeric localization of CAP-D3/condensin II and chromosome cohesion, leading to an increase in intercentromeric distance and deformation of centromeric structure. These defects promote merotelic attachment, resulting in failure of chromosome congression and an increased propensity for lagging chromosomes following mitotic delay. While complete loss of centromere function or chromosome cohesion would have catastrophic consequences, these more moderate defects allow pRB-deficient cells to proliferate but undermine the fidelity of mitosis, leading to whole-chromosome gains and losses. These observations explain an important consequence of RB1 inactivation, and suggest that subtle defects in centromere function are a frequent source of merotely and CIN in cancer. High-throughput genomic profiling studies illustrate the fact that most human tumors are aneuploid and display abnormalities in the number of whole chromosomes or chromosome arms (Hanahan and Weinberg 2000;Albertson et al. 2003;Beroukhim et al. 2010). Furthermore, many tumors have been shown to be chromosomally unstable (Lengauer et al. 1997). Chromosome instability (CIN), defined as an elevated rate of gains and losses of whole chromosomes (10-1003 more often than stable diploid cells) (Lengauer et al. 1997), has been proposed to promote the evolution of tumor cells. Such genomic changes potentially promote metastasis and chemotherapeutic resistance, and correlate with poorer patient prognosis (Nowell 1976;Kuukasjarvi et al. 1997;Rajagopalan and Lengauer 2004;Gao et al. 2007). Recent studies show that aneuploidy and CIN can have a causal role in tumorigenesis and relapse (Rasnick and Duesberg 1999;Weaver et al. 2007;Baker et al. 2009;Sotillo et al. 2010).CIN likely results from persistent defects in mitotic fidelity, and several mechanisms have been described that cause cells to missegregate whole chromosomes, including defects in bipolar spindle formation, chromosome-spindle association, chromosome cohesion, and the spindle assembly checkpoint (Cahill et al. 1998;Nigg 2002;Sotillo et al. 2007;Thompson and Compton 2008;Baker et al. 2009;Bakhoum et al. 2009;Ganem et al. 2009;Silkworth et al. 2009).The retinoblastoma tumor susceptibility gene (RB1) is a key regulator of cell proliferation. RB1 was one of the first tumor suppressor genes to be ide...

The KDM4/JMJD2 family of histone demethylases is amplified in human cancers. However, little is known about their physiologic or tumorigenic roles. We have identified a conserved and unappreciated role for the JMJD2A/KDM4A H3K9/36 tridemethylase in cell cycle progression. We demonstrate that JMJD2A protein levels are regulated in a cell cycle-dependent manner and that JMJD2A overexpression increased chromatin accessibility, S phase progression, and altered replication timing of specific genomic loci. These phenotypes depended on JMJD2A enzymatic activity. Strikingly, depletion of the only C. elegans homolog, JMJD-2, slowed DNA replication and increased ATR/p53-dependent apoptosis. Importantly, overexpression of HP1γ antagonized JMJD2A-dependent progression through S phase, and depletion of HPL-2 rescued the DNA replication-related phenotypes in jmjd-2(-/-) animals. Our findings describe a highly conserved model whereby JMJD2A regulates DNA replication by antagonizing HP1γ and controlling chromatin accessibility.

The Drosophila retinoblastoma family of proteins (RBF1 and RBF2) and their mammalian homologs (pRB, p130, and p107) are best known for their regulation of the G1/S transition via the repression of E2F-dependent transcription. However, RB family members also possess additional functions. Here, we report that rbf1 mutant larvae have extensive defects in chromatin condensation during mitosis. We describe a novel interaction between RBF1 and dCAP-D3, a non-SMC component of the Condensin II complex that links RBF1 to the regulation of chromosome structure. RBF1 physically interacts with dCAP-D3, RBF1 and dCAP-D3 partially colocalize on polytene chromosomes, and RBF1 is required for efficient association of dCAP-D3 with chromatin. dCap-D3 mutants also exhibit chromatin condensation defects, and mutant alleles of dCap-D3 suppress cellular and developmental phenotypes induced by the overexpression of RBF1. Interestingly, this interaction is conserved between flies and humans. The re-expression of pRB into a pRB-deficient human tumor cell line promotes chromatin association of hCAP-D3 in a manner that depends on the LXCXE-binding cleft of pRB. These results uncover an unexpected link between pRB/RBF1 and chromatin condensation, providing a mechanism by which the functional inactivation of RB family members in human tumor cells may contribute to genome instability.[Keywords: RBF1; RB; CAP-D3; chromatin; condensation; Condensin II] Supplemental material is available at http://www.genesdev.org.