Project description:These studies identify a novel node of AR-regulated DNA repair through CRY1 directly regulating HR-mediated DNA repair to enhance cancer progression and discern a potential avenue to be targeted in late stage disease to improve patient outcome.
Project description:These studies identify a novel node of AR-regulated DNA repair through CRY1 directly regulating HR-mediated DNA repair to enhance cancer progression and discern a potential avenue to be targeted in late stage disease to improve patient outcome.
Project description:Cryptochromes are negative transcriptional regulators of the circadian clock in mammals. It is not clear how reducing the level of endogenous CRY1 in mammals will affect circadian rhythm and the relation of such a decrease with apoptosis. Here, we discovered a molecule (M47) that destabilizes Cryptochrome 1 (CRY1) both in vitro and in vivo. The M47 selectively enhanced the degradation rate of CRY1 by increasing its ubiquitination and resulted in increasing the circadian period length of U2OS Bmal1-dLuc cells. In addition, subcellular fractionation studies from mice liver indicated that M47 increased degradation of the CRY1 in the nucleus. Furthermore, M47-mediated CRY1 reduction enhanced cisplatin-induced apoptosis in Ras-transformed p53 null fibroblast cells. Systemic repetitive administration of M47 increased the median lifespan of p53-/- mice by ~25%. Collectively our data suggest that M47 is a very promising molecule to treat forms of cancer depending on the p53 mutation.
Project description:The mammalian circadian clock is a molecular oscillator composed of a feedback loop that involves transcriptional activators CLOCK and BMAL1, and repressors Cryptochrome (CRY) and Period (PER). Here we show that a direct CLOCK-BMAL1 target gene, Gm129, is a novel regulator of the feedback loop. ChIP analysis revealed that the CLOCK:BMAL1:CRY1 complex strongly occupies the promoter region of Gm129. Both mRNA and protein levels of GM129 exhibit high amplitude circadian oscillations in mouse liver, and Gm129 gene encodes a nuclear-localized protein that directly interacts with BMAL1 and represses CLOCK:BMAL1 activity. In vitro and in vivo protein-DNA interaction results demonstrate that, like CRY1, GM129 functions as a repressor by binding to the CLOCK:BMAL1 complex on DNA. Although Gm129-/- or Cry1-/- Gm129-/- mice retain a robust circadian rhythm, the peaks of Nr1d1 and Dbp mRNAs in liver exhibit significant phase delay compared to control. Our results suggest that, in addition to CRYs and PERs, GM129 protein contributes to the transcriptional feedback loop by modulating CLOCK:BMAL1 activity as a transcriptional repressor. Examination of 3 transcriptional regulators in mouse liver
Project description:The duper mutation is a recessive mutation that shortens the period length of the circadian rhythm in Syrian hamsters. These animals show a large phase shift when responding to light pulses. Using two distinct ecotypes and a fast homozygosity mapping strategy, we identified duper as an early nonsense allele of Cryptochrome 1 (Cry1) leading to a short, unstable protein.
Project description:The mammalian circadian clock is a molecular oscillator composed of a feedback loop that involves transcriptional activators CLOCK and BMAL1, and repressors Cryptochrome (CRY) and Period (PER). Here we show that a direct CLOCK-BMAL1 target gene, Gm129, is a novel regulator of the feedback loop. ChIP analysis revealed that the CLOCK:BMAL1:CRY1 complex strongly occupies the promoter region of Gm129. Both mRNA and protein levels of GM129 exhibit high amplitude circadian oscillations in mouse liver, and Gm129 gene encodes a nuclear-localized protein that directly interacts with BMAL1 and represses CLOCK:BMAL1 activity. In vitro and in vivo protein-DNA interaction results demonstrate that, like CRY1, GM129 functions as a repressor by binding to the CLOCK:BMAL1 complex on DNA. Although Gm129-/- or Cry1-/- Gm129-/- mice retain a robust circadian rhythm, the peaks of Nr1d1 and Dbp mRNAs in liver exhibit significant phase delay compared to control. Our results suggest that, in addition to CRYs and PERs, GM129 protein contributes to the transcriptional feedback loop by modulating CLOCK:BMAL1 activity as a transcriptional repressor.
Project description:The human osteosarcoma cell line U2OS contains a functional circadian clock but expresses only a few rhythmic genes. We identified by ChIP-seq analysis 3040 binding sites of the circadian transcription factors BMAL1, CLOCK, and CRY1 in the genome of U2OS cells, comparable to the number found in highly rhythmic tissues like liver. ChIP was performed as described previously (Rey et al, 2011; doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000595) using confluent desynchronized U2OS cells and BMAL1, CLOCK, and CRY1-antibodies. Immunoprecipitated chromatin (10 ng DNA of 8 independent BMAL1 ChIPs with enrichment levels > 80-fold, 9 ng DNA of a CRY1 ChIP with 10-fold enrichment, and 8 ng DNA of a CLOCK ChIP with 40-fold enrichment) was used for library preparation. Three lanes of the BMAL1 library, and one lane each of the CRY1 and CLOCK library were sequenced on the Illumina Genome Analyzer IIx using Single-Read Cluster Generation Kit and 36 Cycle Sequencing Kit v2 (Lausanne Genomics Technologies Facility).