Project description:Neuroblastoma is a pediatric tumor that accounts for more than 15% of cancer-related deaths in children. Survival chances for high-risk patients are less than 50%. Retinoic acid treatment is part of the maintenance therapy given to neuroblastoma patients; however, not all tumors respond to retinoic acid-mediated differentiation. Among neuroblastoma tumors, two phenotypically distinct cell types-adrenergic (ADRN) and mesenchymal (MES), have been identified based on their super-enhancer landscape and transcriptional core regulatory circuitries. We hypothesized that distinct super-enhancers in these different tumor cells could mediate differential response to retinoic acid. To this end, we treated four different neuroblastoma cell lines, comprising both ADRN (MYCN amplified and non-amplified) and MES subtypes, with retinoic acid and studied the super-enhancer landscape upon treatment and after removal of retinoic acid. Using H3K27ac ChIP-seq paired with RNA-seq, we compared the super-enhancers in cells that respond to retinoic acid-mediated differentiation versus those that fail to differentiate. We identified unique super-enhancers associated with cells differentiation; however, even among cells that respond to treatment, there was heterogeneity upon removal of retinoic acid, with MYCN amplified cells remaining differentiated whereas MYCN non-amplified cells reverted to a proliferative state. This study identifies regulatory super-enhancers as a plausible mechanism behind the differential response to retinoic acid-mediated differentiation.
Project description:The aim of this experiment is to study the gene expression response of DLG2 overexpression in neuroblastoma. Four different conditions were compared in neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells, with 4 biological replicates each: 1) Control (no DLG2 overexpression, no retinoic acid treatment), 2) RA (no DLG2 overexpression, retinoic acid treatment), 3) DLG2 (DLG2 overexpression, no retinoic acid treatment), 4) DLG2-RA (DLG2 overexpression, retinoic acid treatment)
Project description:Introgressed variants from other species can be an important source of genetic variation because they may arise rapidly, can include multiple mutations on a single haplotype, and have often been pretested by selection in the species of origin. Although introgressed alleles are generally deleterious, several studies have reported introgression as the source of adaptive alleles-including the rodenticide-resistant variant of Vkorc1 that introgressed from Mus spretus into European populations of Mus musculus domesticus. Here, we conducted bidirectional genome scans to characterize introgressed regions into one wild population of M. spretus from Spain and three wild populations of M. m. domesticus from France, Germany, and Iran. Despite the fact that these species show considerable intrinsic postzygotic reproductive isolation, introgression was observed in all individuals, including in the M. musculus reference genome (GRCm38). Mus spretus individuals had a greater proportion of introgression compared with M. m. domesticus, and within M. m. domesticus, the proportion of introgression decreased with geographic distance from the area of sympatry. Introgression was observed on all autosomes for both species, but not on the X-chromosome in M. m. domesticus, consistent with known X-linked hybrid sterility and inviability genes that have been mapped to the M. spretus X-chromosome. Tract lengths were generally short with a few outliers of up to 2.7 Mb. Interestingly, the longest introgressed tracts were in olfactory receptor regions, and introgressed tracts were significantly enriched for olfactory receptor genes in both species, suggesting that introgression may be a source of functional novelty even between species with high barriers to gene flow.
Project description:Neuroblastoma is a pediatric tumor that accounts for more than 15% of cancer-related deaths in children. Survival chances for high-risk patients are less than 50%. Retinoic acid treatment is part of the maintenance therapy given to neuroblastoma patients; however, not all tumors respond to retinoic acid-mediated differentiation. Among neuroblastoma tumors, two phenotypically distinct cell types-adrenergic (ADRN) and mesenchymal (MES), have been identified based on their super-enhancer landscape and transcriptional core regulatory circuitries. We hypothesized that distinct super-enhancers in these different tumor cells could mediate differential response to retinoic acid. To this end, we treated four different neuroblastoma cell lines, comprising both ADRN (MYCN amplified and non-amplified) and MES subtypes, with retinoic acid and studied the super-enhancer landscape upon treatment and after removal of retinoic acid. Using H3K27ac ChIP-seq paired with RNA-seq, we compared the super-enhancers in cells that respond to retinoic acid-mediated differentiation versus those that fail to differentiate. We identified unique super-enhancers associated with cells differentiation; however, even among cells that respond to treatment, there was heterogeneity upon removal of retinoic acid, with MYCN amplified cells remaining differentiated whereas MYCN non-amplified cells reverted to a proliferative state. This study identifies regulatory super-enhancers as a plausible mechanism behind the differential response to retinoic acid-mediated differentiation.
Project description:Translational research is commonly performed in the C57B6/J mouse strain, chosen for its genetic homogeneity and phenotypic uniformity. Here, we evaluate the suitability of the white-footed deer mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) as a model organism for aging research, offering a comparative analysis against C57B6/J and diversity outbred (DO) Mus musculus strains. Our study includes comparisons of body composition, skeletal muscle function, and cardiovascular parameters, shedding light on potential applications and limitations of P. leucopus in aging studies. Notably, P. leucopus exhibits distinct body composition characteristics, emphasizing reduced muscle force exertion and a unique metabolism, particularly in fat mass. Cardiovascular assessments showed changes in arterial stiffness, challenging conventional assumptions and highlighting the need for a nuanced interpretation of aging-related phenotypes. Our study also highlights inherent challenges associated with maintaining and phenotyping P. leucopus cohorts. Behavioral considerations, including anxiety-induced responses during handling and phenotyping assessment, pose obstacles in acquiring meaningful data. Moreover, the unique anatomy of P. leucopus necessitates careful adaptation of protocols designed for Mus musculus. While showcasing potential benefits, further extensive analyses across broader age ranges and larger cohorts are necessary to establish the reliability of P. leucopus as a robust and translatable model for aging studies.
Project description:DNA topoisomerase IIB has an important role in ligand mediated transcriptional regulation of gene expression. SH-SY5Y is a neuroblastoma cell line that can be induced to differentiate into neuronal-like cells in response to retinoic acid. In this study TOP2B has been knocked out using crispr-cas9 to determine the role of TOP2B in the transcriptional response to retinoic acid. RNA was prepared from untreated wild type and TOP2B null SH-SY5Y cells and from cells exposed to 10 uM All Trans Retinoic Acid (ATRA) for 24 hours.
Project description:The main scientific objective of the project was to investigate whether Lamin A/C could be involved in neuroblastoma differentiation. Moreover, taking into account the significance of differentiation stage in the neuroblastoma tumor progression we have also studied a possible role of Lamin A/C in the tumorigenesis of this neuronal cancer. As differentiating stimulus we used the all-trans retinoic acid (RA), the most effective compound which has been shown to induce differentiation in neuroblastoma cells. To get insight into the impairment of cell differentiation produced by the LMNA (Lamin A/C) silencing in SHSY5Y cells, we compared the gene expression profile of control and silenced cells both in Retinoic Acid treated and untreated samples, using the one-color Agilent microarray platform. Four condition experiment: cells infected with a mock vector (Mock cells), treated and untreated with retinoic acid (RA); cells infected with a silencing vector for LMNA (LMNA-KD cells), treated and untreated with retinoic acid.