Molecular characterization of hiwi, a human member of the piwi gene family whose overexpression is correlated to seminomas

Qiao, Dan; Zeeman, Anne‐Marie; Deng, Wei; Looijenga, Leendert H. J.; Lin, Haifan

doi:10.1038/sj.onc.1205505

Cited by 280 publications

(231 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Genes/antigens preferentially expressed in SEM include PLAP (Hofmann et al, 1989), M2A (Marks et al, 1995), KIT (Strohmeyer et al, 1991;Rajpert-De Meyts and Skakkebaek, 1994; this study), cyclin D2 (CCND2) (Houldsworth et al, 1997;Bartkova et al, 1999;Okada et al, 2003), MAGE-A4 (Aubry et al, 2001), HIWI (Qiao et al, 2002), DAZL-1 (LifschitzMercer et al, 2002), TFCP2L1 (this study), Aggrus (Kato et al, 2004) and JUP . The emerging expression pattern of N-SEMs is more complex, and because of histological variability of these tumours, a distinct 'signature' may not exist for this entity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Genome-wide gene expression profiling of testicular carcinoma in situ progression into overt tumours

et al. 2005

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The carcinoma in situ (CIS) cell is the common precursor of nearly all testicular germ cell tumours (TGCT). In a previous study, we examined the gene expression profile of CIS cells and found many features common to embryonic stem cells indicating that initiation of neoplastic transformation into CIS occurs early during foetal life. Progression into an overt tumour, however, typically first happens after puberty, where CIS cells transform into either a seminoma (SEM) or a nonseminoma (N-SEM). Here, we have compared the genome-wide gene expression of CIS cells to that of testicular SEM and a sample containing a mixture of N-SEM components, and analyse the data together with the previously published data on CIS. Genes showing expression in the SEM or N-SEM were selected, in order to identify gene expression markers associated with the progression of CIS cells. The identified markers were verified by reverse transcriptase -polymerase chain reaction and in situ hybridisation in a range of different TGCT samples. Verification showed some interpatient variation, but combined analysis of a range of the identified markers may discriminate TGCT samples as SEMs or NSEMs. Of particular interest, we found that both DNMT3B (DNA (cytosine-5-)-methyltransferase 3 beta) and DNMT3L (DNA (cytosine-5-)-methyltransferase 3 like) were overexpressed in the N-SEMs, indicating the epigenetic differences between N-SEMs and classical SEM.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Genome-wide gene expression profiling of testicular carcinoma in situ progression into overt tumours

et al. 2005

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“…Overexpression of Piwi, the Drosophila homologue, causes an increase both in the number of germline stem cells and in the rate of their divisions (Qiao et al, 2002). Overexpression of Mili, one of three mouse Piwi homologues, inhibits apoptosis and stimulates proliferation (Lee et al, 2006).…”

Section: Stem Cell-associated Genes H Taubert Et Almentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Expression of Hiwi has been described in different cancers including seminomas, gastric carcinomas and soft-tissue sarcoma (STS) (Qiao et al, 2002;Liu et al, 2006;Taubert et al, 2007). In addition, we have recently reported an association between altered expression of Hiwi mRNA and a poor prognosis for STS patients (Taubert et al, 2007).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Stem cell-associated genes are extremely poor prognostic factors for soft-tissue sarcoma patients

Täubert

Würl²,

Greither

et al. 2007

Oncogene

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Cancer stem cells can play an important role in tumorigenesis and tumor progression. However, it is still difficult to detect and isolate cancer stem cells. An alternative approach is to analyse stem cell-associated gene expression. We investigated the coexpression of three stem cell-associated genes, Hiwi, hTERT and survivin, by quantitative real-time-PCR in 104 primary soft-tissue sarcomas (STS). Multivariate Cox's proportional hazards regression analyses allowed correlating gene expression with overall survival for STS patients. Coexpression of all three stem cell-associated genes resulted in a significantly increased risk of tumor-related death. Importantly, tumors of patients with the poorest prognosis were of all four tumor stages, suggesting that their risk is based upon coexpression of stem cell-associated genes rather than on tumor stage.

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“…The hiwi gene is the human homolog of the piwi family, locating in 12q24.33 and encodes hiwi protein of 98.5 kDa (Qiao et al, 2002). The Piwi family represents the first class of genes known to be required for stem cell self-renewal in diverse organisms such as jellyfish, Caenorhabditis elegans, D. melanogaster, zebrafish, mouse and humans (Liu et al, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hiwi mRNA is present in human CD34 (+) haematopoietic progenitor cells, but not in more differentiated cell populations (Sharma et al, 2001). In addition to its function in stem cell renewal, overexpression of Hiwi in male germline cells correlates with the occurrence of seminomas, a testicular germ cell tumours (Qiao et al, 2002). Recently, accumulating reports have revealed that abnormal hiwi expression is associated with poorer prognosis of human malignant tumors, such as human esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (He et al, 2009), human adenocarcinoma of the pancreas (Grochola et al, 2008), human gastric cancer (Liu et al, 2006), and colorectal cancer (Oh et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Overexpression of Hiwi Promotes Growth of Human Breast Cancer Cells

Wang¹,

Wang²,

Wang³

et al. 2014

Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention

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The Piwi subfamily comprises two argonaute (Ago) family proteins, which are defined by the presence of PAZ and Piwi domains, with well known roles in RNA silencing. Hiwi, a human Piwi subfamily member, has been shown to play essential roles in stem cell self-renewal and gametogenesis. Recently, accumulating reports have indicated that abnormal hiwi expression is associated with poorer prognosis of multiple types of human cancers, including examples in the breast. However, little is known about details of the oncogenic role of hiwi in breast cancers. In present study, we confirmed overexpression of hiwi in breast cancer specimens and breast cancer cell lines at both mRNA and protein levels. Thus both RT-qPCR and Western blot data revealed significantly higher hiwi in intratumor than peritumor specimens, overexpression being associated with tumor size, lymph node metastasis and histological grade. Hiwi overexpression was also identified in breast cancer cell lines, MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7, and gain-of-function and loss-of-function strategies were adopted to identify the role of hiwi in the MCF-7 cell growth. Results demonstrated that hiwi expression in MCF-7 cells was significantly up-or down-regulated by the two strategies. We next evaluated the influence of hiwi overexpression or knockdown on the growth of breast cancer cells. Both cell count and colony formation assays confirmed promoting roles of hiwi in MCF-7 cells, which could be inhibited by hiwi specific blockage by siRNAs. In summary, the present study confirmed overexpression of hiwi in breast cancer specimens and breast cancer cell lines, and provided evidence of promotion by hiwi of cell growth. The results imply an oncogenic role of hiwi in breast cancers.

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Molecular characterization of hiwi, a human member of the piwi gene family whose overexpression is correlated to seminomas

Cited by 280 publications

References 47 publications

Genome-wide gene expression profiling of testicular carcinoma in situ progression into overt tumours

Genome-wide gene expression profiling of testicular carcinoma in situ progression into overt tumours

Stem cell-associated genes are extremely poor prognostic factors for soft-tissue sarcoma patients

Overexpression of Hiwi Promotes Growth of Human Breast Cancer Cells

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