Project description:Many normal tissues undergo age-related DNA methylation drift providing a quantitative measure of tissue age. However this drift has not been demonstrated in neoplastic tissues. Here we identify and validate 781 CpG-islands (CGIs) that undergo significant methylomic drift in normal colorectal tissues continue to drift in neoplasia and remain significantly correlated with one another across tissue samples. However compared with normal colon this drift advances (~3-4 fold) faster in neoplasia consistent with increased cell proliferation during neoplastic progression. Furthermore we show that the observed drift patterns are broadly consistent with modeled adenoma-carcinoma sojourn time distributions from colorectal cancer (CRC) incidence data. These results support the hypothesis that beginning with the founder premalignant cell cancer precursors frequently sojourn for decades before turning into cancer which implies that the founder cell typically arises early in life. We estimate that at least 77-89% of the observed drift variance in distal and rectal tumors is explained by stochastic variability associated with neoplastic progression while only 55% of the variance is explained for proximal tumors. However >50% of identified gene-CGI pairs in the proximal colon that undergo drift are significantly and mainly negatively correlated with cancer gene expression suggesting that methylomic drift participates in the clonal evolution of CRCs. Significance: Methylomic drift advances in colorectal neoplasia consistent with extended sojourn time distributions explaining a significant fraction of epigenetic heterogeneity in CRCs. Importantly the estimated long-duration premalignant sojourn times suggest that early dietary and lifestyle interventions may be more effective than later changes in reducing CRC incidence.
Project description:Accumulation of allelic variants in genes that regulate cellular proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis may result in expansion of the aberrant intestinal epithelium, generating adenomas. Herein, we compared the mutation profiles of conventional colorectal adenomas (CNADs) across stages of progression towards early carcinoma. DNA was isolated from 17 invasive adenocarcinomas (ACs) and 58 large CNADs, including 19 with low-grade dysplasia (LGD), 21 with LGD adjacent to areas of high-grade dysplasia and/or carcinoma (LGD-H), and 28 with high-grade dysplasia (HGD). Ion AmpliSeq Comprehensive Cancer Panel libraries were prepared and sequenced on the Ion Proton. We identified 956 unique allelic variants; of these, 499 were considered nonsynonymous variants. Eleven genes (APC, KRAS, SYNE1, NOTCH4, BLNK, FBXW7, GNAS, KMT2D, TAF1L, TCF7L2, and TP53) were mutated in at least 15% of all samples. Out of frequently mutated genes, TP53 and BCL2 had a consistent trend in mutation prevalence towards malignancy, while two other genes (HNF1A and FBXW7) exhibited the opposite trend. HGD adenomas had significantly higher mutation rates than LGD adenomas, while LGD-H adenomas exhibited mutation frequencies similar to those of LGD adenomas. A significant increase in copy number variant frequency was observed from LGD through HGD to malignant samples. The profiling of advanced CNADs demonstrated variations in mutation patterns among colorectal premalignancies. Only limited numbers of genes were repeatedly mutated while the majority were altered in single cases. Most genetic alterations in adenomas can be considered early contributors to colorectal carcinogenesis.
Project description:We performed shotgun proteomics of colorectal cancer tissue and premalignant lesions using iTRAQ to identify biomarker candidate proteins for colorectal cancer.
Project description:Using miRDeep2 and a custom NGS data analysis workflow to annotate and quantify isomiRs in normal and neoplastic colorectal tissues.
Project description:Lung squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is thought to arise from premalignant lesions in the airway epithelium, therefore studying these lesions is critical for understanding lung carcinogenesis. We performed RNA sequencing on laser-microdissected representative cell populations along the SCC pathological continuum of patient-matched normal basal cells, premalignant lesions, and tumor cells. We discovered transcriptomic changes and identified genomic pathways altered with initiation and progression of SCC within individual patients. We used immunofluorescent staining to confirm gene expression changes in premalignant lesions and tumor cells, including increased expression of SLC2A1, CEACAM5, and PTBP3 at the protein level and increased activation of MYC via nuclear translocation. Cytoband enrichment analysis revealed coordinated loss and gain of expression in chromosome 3p and 3q regions, respectively, during carcinogenesis. This is the first gene expression profiling of airway premalignant lesions with patient-matched samples that provides insight into the mechanisms of stepwise lung carcinogenesis.
Project description:Lung squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is thought to arise from premalignant lesions in the airway epithelium, therefore studying these lesions is critical for understanding lung carcinogenesis. We performed RNA sequencing on laser-microdissected representative cell populations along the SCC pathological continuum of patient-matched normal basal cells, premalignant lesions, and tumor cells. We discovered transcriptomic changes and identified genomic pathways altered with initiation and progression of SCC within individual patients. We used immunofluorescent staining to confirm gene expression changes in premalignant lesions and tumor cells, including increased expression of SLC2A1, CEACAM5, and PTBP3 at the protein level and increased activation of MYC via nuclear translocation. Cytoband enrichment analysis revealed coordinated loss and gain of expression in chromosome 3p and 3q regions, respectively, during carcinogenesis. This is the first gene expression profiling of airway premalignant lesions with patient-matched samples that provides insight into the mechanisms of stepwise lung carcinogenesis. Profiling of mRNA expression in laser-microdissected normal airway basal cells, premalignant airway lesions, and lung SCC tumor cells by massively parallel RNA sequencing.
Project description:Colibactin, a potent genotoxin of Escherichia coli, causes DNA double strand breaks (DSBs). We investigated if colibactin creates a particular DNA damage signature in infected human cells. Genomic contexts of colibactin-induced DSBs were enriched for a distinct AT-rich hexameric sequence motif. A survey of somatic mutations at the colibactin target sites of several thousand cancer genomes revealed significant enrichment of the motif in colorectal cancers. Moreover, the exact break point location corresponded with mutational hot spots in these cancers corresponding to a distinct trinucleotide signature. This work provides evidence for a role of colibactin in the etiology of human cancer.