Alternative Splicing of EZH2 Pre-Mrna by SF3B3 Contributes To
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Published OnlineFirst November 22, 2016; DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-16-2020 Biology of Human Tumors Clinical Cancer Research Alternative Splicing of EZH2 pre-mRNA by SF3B3 Contributes to the Tumorigenic Potential of Renal Cancer Ke Chen1,2, Haibing Xiao1,2,3, Jin Zeng1,2, Gan Yu1,2, Hui Zhou1,2, Chunhua Huang4, Weimin Yao1,2, Wei Xiao1,2, Junhui Hu1,2, Wei Guan1,2, Lily Wu5, Jiaoti Huang6, Qihong Huang7,HuaXu1,2, and Zhangqun Ye1,2 Abstract Purpose: Deregulation or mutation of the EZH2 gene causes ited, and EZH2 promoted, cell growth, migration, proliferation, various tumors, including clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). and tumorigenicity in a xenograft model. Mechanistic studies Although several splice variants of EZH2 have been identified, demonstrated that EZH2D14 isoform functions as a dominant- little is known about how EZH2 splicing is regulated or the negative inhibitor of full-length EZH2. Coexpression of EZH2D14 contribution of alternative splicing to its protumorigenic variant with full-length EZH2 not only abrogated DAB2IP and functions. HOXA9 suppression but also inhibited EZH2-driven tumorigen- Experimental Design: We conducted RT-PCR, Western blot esis. Strikingly, the splicing factor SF3B3 stimulates inclusion of analysis, and IHC techniques to examine EZH2 and its alternative exon14 and has pro-proliferative activity. Importantly, the upre- splicing transcript expression in renal cancer tissue and renal gulation of SF3B3 expression observed in clinical ccRCC samples cancer cell lines. Proliferation, migration, clonogenicity, and parallels the increased inclusion of EZH2 exon14, and the SF3B3 tumorigenicity of renal cancer cells either exhibiting knockdown level is associated with higher tumor stage and poor overall of EZH2 or its splicing factor SF3B3 were assessed by CCK8, survival. Transwell assay, and murine xenograft experiments. Conclusions: These results suggest SF3B3 as a key regulator of Results: We found that the inclusion of alternative EZH2 exon EZH2 pre-mRNA splicing and SF3B3 may represent a novel 14 was significantly increased in ccRCC samples and renal cancer prognostic factor and potential therapeutic target in ccRCC. Clin cell lines. In ccRCC lines, enforced expression of EZH2D14 inhib- Cancer Res; 1–14. Ó2016 AACR. Introduction carcinoma (2–6). Mechanistically, EZH2, and by inference H3K27 methylation, targets many tumor suppressor genes such PRC2 catalyzes the mono-, di-, and trimethylation of lysine 27 as DAB2IP and HOXA9 (7). Besides, EZH2 also has other HMT- of histone H3, which plays an important role in the regulation of independent functions, including DNA methylation, STAT3 tumor transformation and progression (1). EZH2, the catalytic methylation, GATA4 methylation, RORalpha methylation, subunit of PRC2, is recurrently mutated in several forms of cancer NOTCH1 activation, and androgen receptor activation (8–13). and is highly expressed in numerous others, including renal cell Numerous studies showed that PRC2 can also have a tumor- suppressive function (reviewed in refs.14, 15). In numerous experimental settings, it has been established that EZH2 expres- 1Department of Urology, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong 2 sion and activity are highly regulated at the transcriptional (16– University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, P.R. China. Hubei Institute of – Urology, Wuhan, P.R. China. 3Department of Urology, Union Hospital, Tongji 19), posttranscriptional (20 23), and posttranslational levels Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, P.R. (24–28). Targeting EZH2 is believed to be a promising strategy China. 4College of Basic Medicine, Hubei University of Traditional Chinese for cancer therapy (29, 30). However, an incomplete understand- Medicine, No.1 HUANGJIAHU Road, Hongshan District, Wuhan, China. 5Depart- ing of the molecular mechanisms that regulate EZH2 remains a ment of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine, barrier to designing effective therapeutics against EZH2. University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California. 6Department of Almost all human genes are subject to alternative splicing, a Urology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, California. 7The Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. pivotal mechanism for generating protein diversity; indeed dif- ferent splice isoforms from the same gene may have differing and Note: Supplementary data for this article are available at Clinical Cancer Research Online (http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/). even opposing functions. Increasing evidence suggests that tumorigenesis often involves large-scale alterations in alternative K. Chen and H. Xiao contributed equally to this article. splicing (reviewed in ref.31). For example, SF3B1 is a crucial Corresponding Author: Hua Xu, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huaz- component of the splicing machinery, which is frequently mutat- hong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, Hubei, China. ed in refractory anemia with ring sideroblasts (RARS; ref.32), Phone/Fax: 8627-8366-3454; E-mail: [email protected] RARS associated with thrombocytosis (RARS-T; ref.33), and doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-16-2020 chronic lymphocytic leukemia (34, 35). Thus, the deregulation Ó2016 American Association for Cancer Research. of alternative RNA splicing plays a critical role in tumor www.aacrjournals.org OF1 Downloaded from clincancerres.aacrjournals.org on September 28, 2021. © 2016 American Association for Cancer Research. Published OnlineFirst November 22, 2016; DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-16-2020 Chen et al. horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-linked whole antibody (31430) and Translational Relevance goat anti-rabbit IgG HRP-linked whole antibody (31460) pur- Dysregulated expression or mutation of EZH2 is being chased from Thermo Scientific. recognized as a critical event in several genetic disorders and cancer, but the regulation of EZH2 splicing, and the functional Plasmids and clinical significance of the variants in clear cell renal cell Human EZH2 cDNA was PCR amplified using primers EZH2-50 carcinoma (ccRCC) remains unexplored. Herein, we found and -30, digested by BamHI and XhoI, and ligated into psi-HA, psi- that inclusion of alternative EZH2 exon 14 was significantly Myc, psi-Flag, and EGFP-myc-C1, respectively. The SUZ12 cDNA increased in ccRCC samples. Functional assays identified that was PCR amplified using primers SUZ12-50 and SUZ12-30, SF3B3 promotes inclusion of EZH2 exon 14 and has pro- digested by XhoI and EcoRI, and ligated into psi-Flag cut with proliferative activity. Importantly, the upregulation of SF3B3 XhoI and EcoRI to create the Flag-SUZ12. The EED cDNA was PCR expression observed in clinical ccRCC samples parallels the amplified using primers EED-50 and EED-30, digested by BamHI increased inclusion of EZH2 exon 14, and the SF3B3 level is and XhoI, and ligated into psi-Flag cut with BamHI and XhoIto associated with higher tumor stage and poor overall survival. create the Flag-EED. The RNAi-resistant EZH2 (Flag–EZH2–RM) Collectively, our findings clarified how upregulation of SF3B3 constructs, which the RNAi-targeted nucleotide sequence was exerts an oncogenic function in ccRCC that may offer a novel partially substituted without affecting the aa residues (50- prognostic factor and potential therapeutic target in this GGACGGCTCCTCTAACCATGT-30), was generated by a two-step disease. PCR-based mutagenesis procedure using Flag-EZH2 as the tem- plate. psi-Rluc-MCS-Fluc recombinant was constructed by cloning the coding region of Renilla luciferase and firefly luciferase into psi-EGFP-N1. Splicing reporter Rluc-miniEZH2-Fluc construct, which contains a point change sequence that introduced the stop development and progression. However, the roles of spliced codon in the EZH2 exon 14, was generated by a two-step PCR- variants and splicing factors that control splicing dysregulation based mutagenesis procedure. The primers for making these in tumorigenesis need more investigation. constructs are showed in Supplementary Table S1. All plasmids In this study, we observe that inclusion of EZH2 exon 14 is were verified by sequencing. significantly increased in renal cancer cell lines and renal cancer Gene-specific shRNA target sequence was synthesized and samples. EZH2D14 inhibits, and EZH2 promotes, renal tumor cloned into the HpaI and XhoI sites of the pSicoR plasmid tumorigenesis. Mechanistically, EZH2D14 competes with EZH2 (Addgene, #11597). The primers for making these constructs were for other PRC2 components and long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) provided in Supplementary Table S1. The paired primers were binding, but had little or no histone methyltransferase (HMT) annealed and ligated into pSicoR cut with HpaI and XhoI to create activity, and EZH2D14 isoform functions as a dominant-negative shRNA plasmids. For application of Cas9 for site-specific genome inhibitor of full-length EZH2. We also demonstrated that the editing in human cells, EZH2-specific sgRNA was synthesized and splicing factor SF3B3 promotes the inclusion of exon 14. Knock- cloned into lentiCRISPRv2 containing two expression cassettes, down of SF3B3 inhibits cell proliferation, colony formation, and hSpCas9 and the chimeric guide RNA (Addgene, #52961). The cell migration in vitro and suppresses carcinogenesis in vivo. paired primers were annealed and ligated into lentiCRISPRv2 and Importantly, SF3B3 is upregulated in ccRCC and highly correlates cut with BsmBI to create sgEZH2 plasmids. For the activation of with EZH2