Different genetic mechanisms mediate spontaneous versus UVR-induced malignant melanoma
- QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Australia
- Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research, Australia
Abstract
Genetic variation conferring resistance and susceptibility to carcinogen-induced tumorigenesis is frequently studied in mice. We have now turned this to melanoma using the collaborative cross (CC), a resource of mouse strains designed to discover genes for complex diseases. We studied melanoma-prone transgenic progeny across seventy CC genetic backgrounds. We mapped a strong quantitative trait locus for rapid onset spontaneous melanoma onset to Prkdc, a gene involved in detection and repair of DNA damage. In contrast, rapid onset UVR-induced melanoma was linked to the ribosomal subunit gene Rrp15. Ribosome biogenesis was upregulated in skin shortly after UVR exposure. Mechanistically, variation in the 'usual suspects' by which UVR may exacerbate melanoma, defective DNA repair, melanocyte proliferation, or inflammatory cell infiltration, did not explain melanoma susceptibility or resistance across the CC. Instead, events occurring soon after exposure, such as dysregulation of ribosome function, which alters many aspects of cellular metabolism, may be important.
Data availability
All data generated in this manuscript are provided in the manuscript and supporting files.
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Author details
Funding
Melanoma Research Alliance (Investigator Grant Award Number: 346859 2015-2018)
- Graeme J Walker
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations Australian code of Practice for the care and use of animals for scientific purposes.. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee of the Queensland Institute of Medical research. The protocol was approved by the Committee (A98004M). No surgery was performed. Animals were sacrificed when tumours reached 10mm in diameter, or animals were otherwise distressed.
Copyright
© 2019, Ferguson et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Different genetic mechanisms mediate spontaneous versus UVR-induced malignant melanoma
eLife 8:e42424.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.42424
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