1
|
Sun H, Kim P, Jia P, Park AK, Liang H, Zhao Z. Distinct telomere length and molecular signatures in seminoma and non-seminoma of testicular germ cell tumor. Brief Bioinform 2020; 20:1502-1512. [PMID: 29579225 DOI: 10.1093/bib/bby020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2017] [Revised: 02/15/2018] [Indexed: 12/15/2022] Open
Abstract
Testicular germ cell tumors (TGCTs) are classified into two main subtypes, seminoma (SE) and non-seminoma (NSE), but their molecular distinctions remain largely unexplored. Here, we used expression data for mRNAs and microRNAs (miRNAs) from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) to perform a systematic investigation to explain the different telomere length (TL) features between NSE (n = 48) and SE (n = 55). We found that TL elongation was dominant in NSE, whereas TL shortening prevailed in SE. We further showed that both mRNA and miRNA expression profiles could clearly distinguish these two subtypes. Notably, four telomere-related genes (TelGenes) showed significantly higher expression and positively correlated with telomere elongation in NSE than SE: three telomerase activity-related genes (TERT, WRAP53 and MYC) and an independent telomerase activity gene (ZSCAN4). We also found that the expression of genes encoding Yamanaka factors was positively correlated with telomere lengthening in NSE. Among them, SOX2 and MYC were highly expressed in NSE versus SE, while POU5F1 and KLF4 had the opposite patterns. These results suggested that enhanced expression of both TelGenes (TERT, WRAP53, MYC and ZSCAN4) and Yamanaka factors might induce telomere elongation in NSE. Conversely, the relative lack of telomerase activation and low expression of independent telomerase activity pathway during cell division may be contributed to telomere shortening in SE. Taken together, our results revealed the potential molecular profiles and regulatory roles involving the TL difference between NSE and SE, and provided a better molecular understanding of this complex disease.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Hua Sun
- Center for Precision Health, School of Biomedical Informatics, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA
| | - Pora Kim
- Center for Precision Health, School of Biomedical Informatics, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA
| | - Peilin Jia
- Center for Precision Health, School of Biomedical Informatics, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA
| | - Ae Kyung Park
- Center for Precision Health, School of Biomedical Informatics, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA.,College of Pharmacy and Research Institute of Life and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Sunchon National University, Suncheon, 57922, Republic of Korea
| | - Han Liang
- Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA.,Department of Systems Biology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA
| | - Zhongming Zhao
- Center for Precision Health, School of Biomedical Informatics, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA.,Human Genetics Center, School of Public Health, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA.,Department of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN 37203, USA
| |
Collapse
|
2
|
Ackermann S, Fischer M. Telomere Maintenance in Pediatric Cancer. Int J Mol Sci 2019; 20:E5836. [PMID: 31757062 PMCID: PMC6928840 DOI: 10.3390/ijms20235836] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/11/2019] [Revised: 11/15/2019] [Accepted: 11/18/2019] [Indexed: 02/06/2023] Open
Abstract
Telomere length has been proposed as a biomarker of biological age and a risk factor for age-related diseases and cancer. Substantial progress has been made in recent decades in understanding the complex molecular relationships in this research field. However, the majority of telomere studies have been conducted in adults. The data on telomere dynamics in pediatric cancers is limited, and interpretation can be challenging, especially in cases where results are contrasting to those in adult entities. This review describes recent advances in the molecular characterization of structure and function of telomeres, regulation of telomerase activity in cancer pathogenesis in general, and highlights the key advances that have expanded our views on telomere biology in pediatric cancer, with special emphasis on the central role of telomere maintenance in neuroblastoma. Furthermore, open questions in the field of telomere maintenance research are discussed in the context of recently published literature.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Sandra Ackermann
- Department of Experimental Pediatric Oncology, University Children’s Hospital of Cologne, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital of Cologne, Kerpener Straße 62, 50937 Cologne, Germany
- Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne (CMMC), University of Cologne, Robert-Koch-Straße 21, 50931 Cologne, Germany
| | - Matthias Fischer
- Department of Experimental Pediatric Oncology, University Children’s Hospital of Cologne, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital of Cologne, Kerpener Straße 62, 50937 Cologne, Germany
- Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne (CMMC), University of Cologne, Robert-Koch-Straße 21, 50931 Cologne, Germany
| |
Collapse
|
3
|
Tichy ED, Sidibe DK, Tierney MT, Stec MJ, Sharifi-Sanjani M, Hosalkar H, Mubarak S, Johnson FB, Sacco A, Mourkioti F. Single Stem Cell Imaging and Analysis Reveals Telomere Length Differences in Diseased Human and Mouse Skeletal Muscles. Stem Cell Reports 2017; 9:1328-1341. [PMID: 28890163 PMCID: PMC5639167 DOI: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2017.08.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 33] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/25/2017] [Revised: 08/08/2017] [Accepted: 08/11/2017] [Indexed: 12/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Muscle stem cells (MuSCs) contribute to muscle regeneration following injury. In many muscle disorders, the repeated cycles of damage and repair lead to stem cell dysfunction. While telomere attrition may contribute to aberrant stem cell functions, methods to accurately measure telomere length in stem cells from skeletal muscles have not been demonstrated. Here, we have optimized and validated such a method, named MuQ-FISH, for analyzing telomere length in MuSCs from either mice or humans. Our analysis showed no differences in telomere length between young and aged MuSCs from uninjured wild-type mice, but MuSCs isolated from young dystrophic mice exhibited significantly shortened telomeres. In corroboration, we demonstrated that telomere attrition is present in human dystrophic MuSCs, which underscores its importance in diseased regenerative failure. The robust technique described herein provides analysis at a single-cell resolution and may be utilized for other cell types, especially rare populations of cells. MuQ-FISH is a telomere analysis assay of mouse and human muscle stem cells Highly sensitive telomere analysis on small numbers of cells Detection of both telomere length and number of telomere foci with MuQ-FISH assay Telomere analysis is now possible in quiescent and/or cycling stem cells
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Elisia D Tichy
- Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Perelman School of Medicine, The University of Pennsylvania, 112A Stemmler Hall, 3450 Hamilton Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6081, USA
| | - David K Sidibe
- Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Perelman School of Medicine, The University of Pennsylvania, 112A Stemmler Hall, 3450 Hamilton Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6081, USA
| | - Matthew T Tierney
- Development, Aging and Regeneration Program, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA
| | - Michael J Stec
- Development, Aging and Regeneration Program, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA
| | - Maryam Sharifi-Sanjani
- Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Perelman School of Medicine, The University of Pennsylvania, 112A Stemmler Hall, 3450 Hamilton Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6081, USA
| | - Harish Hosalkar
- Joint Preservation Center, Tricity Medical Center, Joint Preservation & Deformity Correction Center & Traumatic Brain Injury Program, Paradise Valley Hospital, National City, CA 91950, USA
| | - Scott Mubarak
- Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Rady Children's Hospital, 3030 Children's Way, San Diego, CA 92123, USA
| | - F Brad Johnson
- Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Institute on Aging, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
| | - Alessandra Sacco
- Development, Aging and Regeneration Program, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA
| | - Foteini Mourkioti
- Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Perelman School of Medicine, The University of Pennsylvania, 112A Stemmler Hall, 3450 Hamilton Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6081, USA; Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Perelman School of Medicine, The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
| |
Collapse
|
4
|
Sharifi-Sanjani M, Oyster NM, Tichy ED, Bedi KC, Harel O, Margulies KB, Mourkioti F. Cardiomyocyte-Specific Telomere Shortening is a Distinct Signature of Heart Failure in Humans. J Am Heart Assoc 2017; 6:JAHA.116.005086. [PMID: 28882819 PMCID: PMC5634248 DOI: 10.1161/jaha.116.005086] [Citation(s) in RCA: 70] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/01/2023]
Abstract
Background Telomere defects are thought to play a role in cardiomyopathies, but the specific cell type affected by the disease in human hearts is not yet identified. The aim of this study was to systematically evaluate the cell type specificity of telomere shortening in patients with heart failure in relation to their cardiac disease, age, and sex. Methods and Results We studied cardiac tissues from patients with heart failure by utilizing telomere quantitative fluorescence in situ hybridization, a highly sensitive method with single‐cell resolution. In this study, total of 63 human left ventricular samples, including 37 diseased and 26 nonfailing donor hearts, were stained for telomeres in combination with cardiomyocyte‐ or α‐smooth muscle cell‐specific markers, cardiac troponin T, and smooth muscle actin, respectively, and assessed for telomere length. Patients with heart failure demonstrate shorter cardiomyocyte telomeres compared with nonfailing donors, which is specific only to cardiomyocytes within diseased human hearts and is associated with cardiomyocyte DNA damage. Our data further reveal that hypertrophic hearts with reduced ejection fraction exhibit the shortest telomeres. In contrast to other reported cell types, no difference in cardiomyocyte telomere length is evident with age. However, under the disease state, telomere attrition manifests in both young and older patients with cardiac hypertrophy. Finally, we demonstrate that cardiomyocyte‐telomere length is better sustained in women than men under diseased conditions. Conclusions This study provides the first evidence of cardiomyocyte‐specific telomere shortening in heart failure.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
| | - Nicholas M Oyster
- Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
| | - Elisia D Tichy
- Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
| | - Kenneth C Bedi
- Cardiovascular Institute, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
| | - Ofer Harel
- College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Department of Statistics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
| | | | - Foteini Mourkioti
- Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT .,Cardiovascular Institute, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT.,Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
| |
Collapse
|
5
|
Sharifi-Sanjani M, Meeker AK, Mourkioti F. Evaluation of telomere length in human cardiac tissues using cardiac quantitative FISH. Nat Protoc 2017; 12:1855-1870. [PMID: 28817123 DOI: 10.1038/nprot.2017.082] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/06/2023]
Abstract
Telomere length has been correlated with various diseases, including cardiovascular disease and cancer. The use of currently available telomere-length measurement techniques is often restricted by the requirement of a large amount of cells (Southern-based techniques) or the lack of information on individual cells or telomeres (PCR-based methods). Although several methods have been used to measure telomere length in tissues as a whole, the assessment of cell-type-specific telomere length provides valuable information on individual cell types. The development of fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) technologies enables the quantification of telomeres in individual chromosomes, but the use of these methods is dependent on the availability of isolated cells, which prevents their use with fixed archival samples. Here we describe an optimized quantitative FISH (Q-FISH) protocol for measuring telomere length that bypasses the previous limitations by avoiding contributions from undesired cell types. We have used this protocol on small paraffin-embedded cardiac-tissue samples. This protocol describes step-by-step procedures for tissue preparation, permeabilization, cardiac-tissue pretreatment and hybridization with a Cy3-labeled telomeric repeat complementing (CCCTAA)3 peptide nucleic acid (PNA) probe coupled with cardiac-specific antibody staining. We also describe how to quantify telomere length by means of the fluorescence intensity and area of each telomere within individual nuclei. This protocol provides comparative cell-type-specific telomere-length measurements in relatively small human cardiac samples and offers an attractive technique to test hypotheses implicating telomere length in various cardiac pathologies. The current protocol (from tissue collection to image procurement) takes ∼28 h along with three overnight incubations. We anticipate that the protocol could be easily adapted for use on different tissue types.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Maryam Sharifi-Sanjani
- Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Alan K Meeker
- Departments of Pathology, Oncology and Urology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
| | - Foteini Mourkioti
- Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.,Cardiovascular Institute, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.,Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
| |
Collapse
|
6
|
Amorim JP, Santos G, Vinagre J, Soares P. The Role of ATRX in the Alternative Lengthening of Telomeres (ALT) Phenotype. Genes (Basel) 2016; 7:E66. [PMID: 27657132 PMCID: PMC5042396 DOI: 10.3390/genes7090066] [Citation(s) in RCA: 63] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/22/2016] [Revised: 09/07/2016] [Accepted: 09/12/2016] [Indexed: 12/15/2022] Open
Abstract
Telomeres are responsible for protecting chromosome ends in order to prevent the loss of coding DNA. Their maintenance is required for achieving immortality by neoplastic cells and can occur by upregulation of the telomerase enzyme or through a homologous recombination-associated process, the alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT). The precise mechanisms that govern the activation of ALT or telomerase in tumor cells are not fully understood, although cellular origin may favor one of the other mechanisms that have been found thus far in mutual exclusivity. Specific mutational events influence ALT activation and maintenance: a unifying frequent feature of tumors that acquire this phenotype are the recurrent mutations of the Alpha Thalassemia/Mental Retardation Syndrome X-Linked (ATRX) or Death-Domain Associated Protein (DAXX) genes. This review summarizes the established criteria about this phenotype: its prevalence, theoretical molecular mechanisms and relation with ATRX, DAXX and other proteins (directly or indirectly interacting and resulting in the ALT phenotype).
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- João P Amorim
- Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde (i3S), Universidade do Porto, Porto 4200-135, Portugal.
- Instituto de Patologia e Imunologia Molecular da Universidade do Porto (Ipatimup), Porto 4200-135, Portugal.
- Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar da Universidade do Porto, Porto 4050-313, Portugal.
| | - Gustavo Santos
- Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde (i3S), Universidade do Porto, Porto 4200-135, Portugal.
- Instituto de Patologia e Imunologia Molecular da Universidade do Porto (Ipatimup), Porto 4200-135, Portugal.
- Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar da Universidade do Porto, Porto 4050-313, Portugal.
| | - João Vinagre
- Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde (i3S), Universidade do Porto, Porto 4200-135, Portugal.
- Instituto de Patologia e Imunologia Molecular da Universidade do Porto (Ipatimup), Porto 4200-135, Portugal.
- Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar da Universidade do Porto, Porto 4050-313, Portugal.
| | - Paula Soares
- Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde (i3S), Universidade do Porto, Porto 4200-135, Portugal.
- Instituto de Patologia e Imunologia Molecular da Universidade do Porto (Ipatimup), Porto 4200-135, Portugal.
- Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar da Universidade do Porto, Porto 4050-313, Portugal.
- Departamento de Patologia e Oncologia, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade do Porto, Porto 4200-139, Portugal.
| |
Collapse
|