Relationship between microRNA genes incidence and cancer-associated genomic regions in canine tumors: a comprehensive bioinformatics study

Profiling canine mammary tumors: A potential model for studying human breast cancer

Despite all clinical progress recorded in the last decades, human breast cancer (HBC) remains a major challenge worldwide both in terms of its incidence and its management. Canine mammary tumors (CMTs) share similarities with HBC and represent an alternative model for HBC. The utility of the canine model in studying HBC relies on their common features, include spontaneous development, subtype classification, mutational profile, alterations in gene expression profile, and incidence/prevalence. This review describes the similarities between CMTs and HBC regarding genomic landscape, microRNA expression alteration, methylation, and metabolomic changes occurring during mammary gland carcinogenesis. The primary purpose of this review is to highlight the advantages of using the canine model as a translational animal model for HBC research and to investigate the challenges and limitations of this approach.

Classical and noncanonical functions of miRNAs in cancers

Alterations in microRNAs (miRNAs) expression are causative in the initiation and progression of human cancers. The molecular events responsible for the widespread differential expression of miRNAs in malignancy are exemplified by their location in cancer-associated genomic regions, epigenetic mechanisms, transcriptional dysregulation, chemical modifications and editing, and alterations in miRNA biogenesis proteins. The classical miRNA function is synonymous with post-transcriptional repression of target protein genes. However, several studies have reported miRNAs functioning outside this paradigm and some of these novel modes of regulation of gene expression have been implicated in cancers. Here, we summarize key aspects of miRNA involvement in cancer, with a special focus on these lesser-studied mechanisms of action.

Integrating CNVs into meta-QTL identified GBP4 as positional candidate for adult cattle stature

Copy number variation (CNV) of DNA sequences, functionally significant but yet fully ascertained, is believed to confer considerable increments in unexplained heritability of quantitative traits. Identification of phenotype-associated CNVs (paCNVs) therefore is a pressing need in CNV studies to speed up their exploitation in cattle breeding programs. Here, we provided a new avenue to achieve this goal that is to project the published CNV data onto meta-quantitative trait loci (meta-QTL) map which connects causal genes with phenotypes. Any CNVs overlapping meta-QTL therefore will be potential paCNVs. This study reported potential paCNVs in Bos taurus autosome 3 (BTA3). Notably, overview indexes and CNVs both highlighted a narrower region (BTA3 54,500,000-55,000,000 bp, named BTA3_INQTL_6) within one constructed meta-QTL. Then, we ascertained guanylate-binding protein 4 (GBP4) among the nine positional candidate genes was significantly associated with adult cattle stature, including body weight (BW, P < 0.05) and withers height (WHT, P < 0.05), fitting GBP4 CNV either with three levels or with six levels in the model. Although higher copy number downregulated the mRNA levels of GBP2 (P < 0.05) and GBP4 (P < 0.05) in 1-Mb window (54.0-55.0 Mb) in muscle and adipose, additional analyses will be needed to clarify the causality behind the ascertained association.

MicroRNAs in pituitary tumors

Since the presence of microRNAs was first observed in normal pituitary, the majority of scientific publications addressing their role and the function of microRNAs in the pituitary have been based on pituitary tumor studies. In this review, we briefly describe the involvement of microRNAs in the synthesis of pituitary hormones and we present a comprehensive inventory of microRNA suppressors and inducers of pituitary tumors. Finally, we summarize the functional role of microRNAs in tumorigenesis, progression and aggressiveness of pituitary tumors, mechanisms contributing to the regulation (transcription factors, genomic modifications or epigenetic) or modulation (pharmacological treatment) of microRNAs in these tumors, and the interest of thoroughly studying the expression of miRNAs in body fluids.

Embryonic stem cell gene expression signatures in the canine mammary tumor: a bioinformatics approach

Canine breast cancer was considered as an ideal model of comparative oncology for the human breast cancer, as there is significant overlap between biological and clinical characteristics of the human and canine breast cancer. We attempt to clarify expression profile of the embryonic stem cell (ES) gene signatures in canine breast cancer. Using microarray datasets (GSE22516 and GSE20718), expression of the three major ES gene signatures (modules or gene-sets), including Myc, ESC-like, and PRC modules, was primarily analyzed through Gene-Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) method in tumor and healthy datasets. For confirmation of the primary results, an additional 13 ES gene-sets which were categorized into four groups including ES expressed (ES exp1 and ES exp2), NOS targets (Nanog targets, Oct4 targets, Sox2 targets, NOS targets, and NOS TFs), Polycomb targets (Suz12 targets, Eed targets, H3K27 bound, and PRC2 targets), and Myc targets (Myc targets1, and Myc targets2) were tested in the tumor and healthy datasets. Our results revealed that there is a valuable overlap between canine and human breast cancer ES gene-sets expression profile, where Myc and ESC-like modules were up-regulated and PRC module was down-regulated in metastatic canine mammary gland tumors. Further analysis of the secondary gene-sets indicated overexpression of the ES expressed, NOS targets (Nanog targets, Oct4 targets, Sox2 targets, and NOS targets), and Myc targets and underexpression of the Polycomb targets in metastatic canine breast cancer.