Alternative splicing downstream of EMT enhances phenotypic plasticity and malignant behaviour in colon cancer
- Erasmus MC, Netherlands
- Institute Curie, France
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
Abstract
Phenotypic plasticity allows carcinoma cells to transiently acquire the quasi-mesenchymal features necessary to detach from the primary mass and proceed along the invasion-metastasis cascade. A broad spectrum of epigenetic mechanisms is likely to cause the epithelial-to-mesenchymal (EMT) and mesenchymal-to-epithelial (MET) transitions necessary to allow local dissemination and distant metastasis. Here, we report on the role played by alternative splicing (AS) in eliciting phenotypic plasticity in epithelial malignancies with focus on colon cancer. By taking advantage of the coexistence of subpopulations of fully epithelial (EpCAMhi) and quasi-mesenchymal and highly metastatic (EpCAMlo) cells in conventional human cancer cell lines, we here show that the differential expression of ESRP1 and other RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) downstream of the EMT master regulator ZEB1, alters the AS pattern of a broad spectrum of targets including CD44 and NUMB, thus resulting in the generation of specific isoforms functionally associated with increased invasion and metastasis. Additional functional and clinical validation studies indicate that both the newly identified RBPs and the CD44s and NUMB2/4 splicing isoforms promote local invasion and distant metastasis and are associated with poor survival in colon cancer. The systematic elucidation of the spectrum of EMT-related RBPs and AS targets in epithelial cancers, apart from the insights in the mechanisms underlying phenotypic plasticity, will lead to the identification of novel and tumor-specific therapeutic targets.
Data availability
The RNA-sequencing data from this study have been submitted to the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database under the accession number GSE192877. Other data referenced in this study are publicly available and can be accessed from the GEO using GSE154927, GSE154730 and Synapse using identifier syn2623706 .
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CD44s and CD44v6 overexpressed RNAseq profiles of colon cancer cell lines HCT116 and SW480NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, GSE192877.
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Transcriptome datasets of the Quaking (QKI) gene knock-down human oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) cellsNCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, GSE154730.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
China Scholarship Council (201806300047)
- Tong Xu
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All mice experiments were implemented according to the Code of Practice for Animal Experiment in Cancer Research from the Netherlands Inspectorate for Health Protections, Commodities and Veterinary Public Health. Permit number AVD1010020171344.
Copyright
© 2022, Xu 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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