Renal Transcriptomics Reveals the Carcinogenic Mechanism of Ethyl Carbamate in Musalais

Abstract

Introduction Musalais is a traditional fermented wine produced in southern Xinjiang (a province of China) and is protected as a form of national intangible cultural heritage. However, ethyl carbamate (EC), which is naturally produced during the fermentation process, has been shown to induce carcinogenesis and was classified as a group 2A carcinogen by The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. Methods In this work, rats were treated with musalais containing EC at varying contents (0.1, 1, or 10 mg/kg). To evaluate the toxicity of EC in musalais, the liver and kidney of the rats were subjected to transcriptomics sequencing. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between treated and untreated rats were identified, and Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes enrichment analysis were performed on these genes to investigate the biological functions affected by EC in musalais. Results The results demonstrated that high EC content in musalais is possibly involved in the regulation of cytochrome P450 metabolism, chemical carcinogenesis, metabolism of xenobiotics by cytochrome P450, Wnt signaling, and p53 signaling by targeting Mgst1, Gstp1, Gsta5, Gsta1, Adh1, Gsta2, and Ccnd1, thereby inducing cancer. Conclusion The present work predicted the potential carcinogenic mechanism of high EC content in musalais, providing a reference for its safety evaluation.

Formation and hazard of ethyl carbamate and construction of genetically engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains in Huangjiu (Chinese grain wine)

“…The first pathway involves nontoxic hydrolysis: More than 90% of EC is metabolized into ethanol, CO 2 , and NH 3 by liver esterase (Chen, Zeng, Fang, et al., 2022; Deng et al., 2023; Gowd et al., 2018). The second pathway is side chain oxidation: About 0.5% of EC is oxidized by cytochrome P450, resulting in producing vinyl carbamate, which will then be further oxidized to vinyl carbamate epoxide (Deng et al., 2023; Gowd et al., 2018; Tu et al., 2018; Wang, Chen, & Xu, 2021; Wang, Chen, Wu, et al., 2021). Vinyl carbamate epoxide has strong mutagenicity and carcinogenicity.…”