Different genetic mechanisms mediate spontaneous versus UVR-induced malignant melanoma

  1. Blake Ferguson
  2. Herlina Y Handoko
  3. Pamela Mukhopadhyay
  4. Arash Chitsazan
  5. Lois Balmer
  6. Grant Morahan
  7. Graeme J Walker  Is a corresponding author
  1. QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Australia
  2. 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.

The following previously published data sets were used

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Blake Ferguson

    QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Herston, Australia
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Herlina Y Handoko

    QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Herston, Australia
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Pamela Mukhopadhyay

    QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Herston, Australia
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Arash Chitsazan

    QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Herston, Australia
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Lois Balmer

    Centre for Diabetes Research, Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research, Perth, Australia
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Grant Morahan

    Centre for Diabetes Research, Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research, Perth, Australia
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Graeme J Walker

    QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Herston, Australia
    For correspondence
    Graeme.Walker@qimr.edu.au
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-9392-8769

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.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Richard M White, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, United States

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.

Version history

  1. Received: October 2, 2018
  2. Accepted: January 25, 2019
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: January 25, 2019 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: March 21, 2019 (version 2)

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.

Metrics

  • 1,541
    Page views
  • 273
    Downloads
  • 20
    Citations

Article citation count generated by polling the highest count across the following sources: Crossref, PubMed Central, Scopus.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Blake Ferguson
  2. Herlina Y Handoko
  3. Pamela Mukhopadhyay
  4. Arash Chitsazan
  5. Lois Balmer
  6. Grant Morahan
  7. Graeme J Walker
(2019)
Different genetic mechanisms mediate spontaneous versus UVR-induced malignant melanoma
eLife 8:e42424.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.42424

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.42424

Further reading

    1. Cancer Biology
    Wanyoung Lim, Inwoo Hwang ... Sungsu Park
    Research Article

    Chemoresistance is a major cause of treatment failure in many cancers. However, the life cycle of cancer cells as they respond to and survive environmental and therapeutic stress is understudied. In this study, we utilized a microfluidic device to induce the development of doxorubicin-resistant (DOXR) cells from triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells within 11 days by generating gradients of DOX and medium. In vivo chemoresistant xenograft models, an unbiased genome-wide transcriptome analysis, and a patient data/tissue analysis all showed that chemoresistance arose from failed epigenetic control of the nuclear protein-1 (NUPR1)/histone deacetylase 11 (HDAC11) axis, and high NUPR1 expression correlated with poor clinical outcomes. These results suggest that the chip can rapidly induce resistant cells that increase tumor heterogeneity and chemoresistance, highlighting the need for further studies on the epigenetic control of the NUPR1/HDAC11 axis in TNBC.

    1. Cancer Biology
    2. Computational and Systems Biology
    Bingrui Li, Fernanda G Kugeratski, Raghu Kalluri
    Research Article

    Non-invasive early cancer diagnosis remains challenging due to the low sensitivity and specificity of current diagnostic approaches. Exosomes are membrane-bound nanovesicles secreted by all cells that contain DNA, RNA, and proteins that are representative of the parent cells. This property, along with the abundance of exosomes in biological fluids makes them compelling candidates as biomarkers. However, a rapid and flexible exosome-based diagnostic method to distinguish human cancers across cancer types in diverse biological fluids is yet to be defined. Here, we describe a novel machine learning-based computational method to distinguish cancers using a panel of proteins associated with exosomes. Employing datasets of exosome proteins from human cell lines, tissue, plasma, serum, and urine samples from a variety of cancers, we identify Clathrin Heavy Chain (CLTC), Ezrin, (EZR), Talin-1 (TLN1), Adenylyl cyclase-associated protein 1 (CAP1), and Moesin (MSN) as highly abundant universal biomarkers for exosomes and define three panels of pan-cancer exosome proteins that distinguish cancer exosomes from other exosomes and aid in classifying cancer subtypes employing random forest models. All the models using proteins from plasma, serum, or urine-derived exosomes yield AUROC scores higher than 0.91 and demonstrate superior performance compared to Support Vector Machine, K Nearest Neighbor Classifier and Gaussian Naive Bayes. This study provides a reliable protein biomarker signature associated with cancer exosomes with scalable machine learning capability for a sensitive and specific non-invasive method of cancer diagnosis.