Human alcoholism studies of genes identified through mouse quantitative trait locus analysis

ZNF133 is a potent suppressor in breast carcinogenesis through dampening L1CAM, a driver for tumor progression

Due to the complexity and heterogeneity of breast cancer, the therapeutic effects of breast cancer treatment vary between subtypes. Breast cancer subtypes are classified based on the presence of molecular markers for estrogen or progesterone receptors and human epidermal growth factor 2. Thus, novel, comprehensive, and precise molecular indicators in breast carcinogenesis are urgently needed. Here, we report that ZNF133, a zinc-finger protein, is negatively associated with poor survival and advanced pathological staging of breast carcinomas. Moreover, ZNF133 is a transcription repressor physically associated with the KAP1 complex. It transcriptionally represses a cohort of genes, including L1CAM, that are critically involved in cell proliferation and motility. We also demonstrate that the ZNF133/KAP1 complex inhibits the proliferation and invasion of breast cancer cells in vitro and suppresses breast cancer growth and metastasis in vivo by dampening the transcription of L1CAM. Taken together, the findings of our study confirm the value of ZNF133 and L1CAM levels in the diagnosis and prognosis of breast cancer, contribute to a deeper understanding of the regulation mechanism of ZNF133 for the first time, and provide a new therapeutic strategy and precise intervention target for breast cancer.

Ethanol sensitivity: a central role for CREB transcription regulation in the cerebellum

Background

Lowered sensitivity to the effects of ethanol increases the risk of developing alcoholism. Inbred mouse strains have been useful for the study of the genetic basis of various drug addiction-related phenotypes. Inbred Long-Sleep (ILS) and Inbred Short-Sleep (ISS) mice differentially express a number of genes thought to be implicated in sensitivity to the effects of ethanol. Concomitantly, there is evidence for a mediating role of cAMP/PKA/CREB signalling in aspects of alcoholism modelled in animals. In this report, the extent to which CREB signalling impacts the differential expression of genes in ILS and ISS mouse cerebella is examined.

Results

A training dataset for Machine Learning (ML) and Exploratory Data Analyses (EDA) was generated from promoter region sequences of a set of genes known to be targets of CREB transcription regulation and a set of genes whose transcription regulations are potentially CREB-independent. For each promoter sequence, a vector of size 132, with elements characterizing nucleotide composition features was generated. Genes whose expressions have been previously determined to be increased in ILS or ISS cerebella were identified, and their CREB regulation status predicted using the ML scheme C4.5. The C4.5 learning scheme was used because, of four ML schemes evaluated, it had the lowest predicted error rate. On an independent evaluation set of 21 genes of known CREB regulation status, C4.5 correctly classified 81% of instances with F-measures of 0.87 and 0.67 respectively for the CREB-regulated and CREB-independent classes. Additionally, six out of eight genes previously determined by two independent microarray platforms to be up-regulated in the ILS or ISS cerebellum were predicted by C4.5 to be transcriptionally regulated by CREB. Furthermore, 64% and 52% of a cross-section of other up-regulated cerebellar genes in ILS and ISS mice, respectively, were deemed to be CREB-regulated.

Conclusion

These observations collectively suggest that ethanol sensitivity, as it relates to the cerebellum, may be associated with CREB transcription activity.