0000000000055007
AUTHOR
José L. Rodríguez
Low rectal cancer: abdominoperineal resection or low Hartmann resection? A postoperative outcome analysis.
BACKGROUND In distal rectum cancers, when the sphincters are not affected and it is not possible to perform a coloanal anastomosis because of the presence of comorbidities or the advanced age of the patient, a low Hartmann resection with total mesorectal excision can be performed. Low Hartmann resection is usually considered to be a shorter procedure and to have an inferior morbidity compared with abdominoperineal resection of the rectum. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to compare the postoperative outcome of a series of patients with low rectal cancer who have undergone either low Hartmann resection or abdominoperineal resection. DESIGN This study is a retrospective analysis of data collected i…
Hepatocyte growth factor induces MAT2A expression and histone acetylation in rat hepatocytes: role in liver regeneration 1
SPECIFIC AIMSWe have studied the molecular mechanisms and mediators behind the induction of methionine adenosyltransferase 2 A (MAT2A) gene expression in the regenerating rat liver after partial he...
In vivo GSH depletion induces c-myc expression by modulation of chromatin protein complexes.
Abstract We hypothesize that glutathione (GSH) fluctuations could have a prominent role in the modulation of c-myc expression through a mechanism affecting chromatin remodeling complexes. This could lead to an open chromatin structure accessible to transcription factors. We studied the in vivo effect of GSH depletion on these complexes bound to the c-myc promoter in the liver of l-buthionine-(S,R)-sulfoximine (BSO)-treated rats. Using chromatin immunoprecipitation we found that 3 h after BSO treatment the repressing complexes Id2 and Sin3A (part of a histone–deacetylase complex) were released from the c-myc promoter. STAT3 was phosphorylated and associated with its coactivator p300 with int…
Vitamin E deficiency induces liver nuclear factor-κB DNA-binding activity and changes in related genes
The biological functions of vitamin E have been classically attributed to its property as a potent inhibitor of lipid peroxidation in cellular membranes. However, in 1991, Azzi's group first described that alpha-tocopherol inhibits smooth muscle cell proliferation in a protein kinase C (PKC)-dependent way, demonstrating a non-antioxidant cell signalling function for vitamin E. More recently, the capacity of alpha-tocopherol to modulate gene expression with the implication of different transcription factors, beyond its antioxidant properties, has also been established. This study was to determine the effect of vitamin E-deficiency on liver nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kappaB) DNA-binding activ…
Nucleosome-specific, Time-dependent Changes in Histone Modifications during Activation of the Early Growth Response 1 (Egr1) Gene
Histone post-translational modifications and nucleosome remodeling are coordinate events involved in eukaryotic transcriptional regulation. There are relatively few data on the time course with which these events occur in individual nucleosomes. As a contribution to fill this gap, we first describe the nature and time course of structural changes in the nucleosomes -2, -1, and +1 of the murine Egr1 gene upon induction. To initiate the transient activation of the gene, we used the stimulation of MLP29 cells with phorbol esters and the in vivo activation after partial hepatectomy. In both models, nucleosomes -1 and +1 are partially evicted, whereas nucleosomes +1 and -2 slide downstream durin…
DNA methylation and histone acetylation of rat methionine adenosyltransferase 1A and 2A genes is tissue-specific.
Methionine adenosyltransferase (MAT) catalyzes the biosynthesis of S-adenosylmethionine (AdoMet). In mammals MAT activity derives from two separate genes which display a tissue-specific pattern of expression. While MAT1A is expressed only in the adult liver, MAT2A is expressed in non-hepatic tissues. The mechanisms behind the selective expression of these two genes are not fully understood. In the present report we have evaluated MAT1A and MAT2A methylation in liver and in other tissues, such as kidney, by methylation-sensitive restriction enzyme digestion of genomic DNA. Our data indicate that MAT1A is hypomethylated in liver and hypermethylated in non-expressing tissues. The opposite situ…
Glutamate cysteine ligase up-regulation fails in necrotizing pancreatitis
Glutathione depletion is a key factor in the development of acute pancreatitis. Our aim was to study the regulation of glutamate cysteine ligase, the rate-limiting enzyme in glutathione synthesis, in edematous or necrotizing pancreatitis in rats. Glutathione levels were kept low in necrotizing pancreatitis for several hours, with no increase in protein or mRNA levels of glutamate cysteine ligase subunits, despite binding of RNA polymerase II to their promoters and coding regions. The survival signal pathway mediated by ERK and c-MYC was activated, and c-MYC was recruited to the promoters. The failure in gene up-regulation seems to be due to a marked increase in cytosolic ribonuclease activi…
Id2 leaves the chromatin of the E2F4-p130-controlled c-myc promoter during hepatocyte priming for liver regeneration
The Id (inhibitor of DNA binding or inhibitor of differentiation) helix–loop–helix proteins are involved in the regulation of cell growth, differentiation and cancer. The fact that the molecular mechanisms of liver regeneration are not completely understood prompted us to study the fate of Id2 in proliferating liver. Id2 increases in liver regeneration after partial hepatectomy, following the early induction of its gene. Co-immunoprecipitation shows that Id2 forms a complex with E2F4, p130 and mSin3A in quiescent liver and all these components are present at the c-myc promoter as shown using ChIP (chromatin immunoprecipitation). Activation of c-myc during hepatocyte priming (G0–G1 transitio…
RNAPol-ChIP: a novel application of chromatin immunoprecipitation to the analysis of real-time gene transcription.
We describe a procedure, RNAPol-ChIP, to measure actual transcriptional rate. It consists of the detection, by chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), of RNA polymerase II within the coding region of genes. To do this, the DNA immunoprecipitated with polymerase antibodies is analysed by PCR, using an amplicon well within the coding region of the desired genes to avoid interferences with polymerase paused at the promoter. To validate RNAPol-ChIP, we compare our results to those obtained by classical methods in several genes induced during either liver regeneration or acute pancreatitis. When short half-life mRNA genes are studied (e.g. c-fos and egr1), RNAPol-ChIP gives results similar to thos…
Epigenetic Regulation of Early- and Late-Response Genes in Acute Pancreatitis
Abstract Chromatin remodeling seems to regulate the patterns of proinflammatory genes. Our aim was to provide new insights into the epigenetic mechanisms that control transcriptional activation of early- and late-response genes in initiation and development of severe acute pancreatitis as a model of acute inflammation. Chromatin changes were studied by chromatin immunoprecipitation analysis, nucleosome positioning, and determination of histone modifications in promoters of proinflammatory genes in vivo in the course of taurocholate-induced necrotizing pancreatitis in rats and in vitro in rat pancreatic AR42J acinar cells stimulated with taurocholate or TNF-α. Here we show that the upregulat…
Acetylated nucleosome assembly on telomeric DNAs
Abstract The role of histone N-terminal domains on the thermodynamic stability of nucleosomes assembled on several different telomeric DNAs as well as on ‘average’ sequence DNA and on strong nucleosome positioning sequences, has been studied by competitive reconstitution. We find that histone tails hyperacetylation favors nucleosome formation, in a similar extent for all the examined sequences. On the contrary, removal of histone terminal domains by selective trypsinization causes a decrease of nucleosome stability which is smaller for telomeres compared to the other sequences examined, suggesting that telomeric sequences have only minor interactions with histone tails. Micrococcal nuclease…
Pentoxifylline Prevents Loss of PP2A Phosphatase Activity and Recruitment of Histone Acetyltransferases to Proinflammatory Genes in Acute Pancreatitis
Mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) are considered major signal transducers early during the development of acute pancreatitis. Pentoxifylline is a phosphodiesterase inhibitor with marked anti-inflammatory properties through blockade of extracellular signal regulated kinase (ERK) phosphorylation and tumor necrosis factor alpha production. Our aim was to elucidate the mechanism of action of pentoxifylline as an anti-inflammatory agent in acute pancreatitis. Necrotizing pancreatitis induced by taurocholate in rats and taurocholate-treated AR42J acinar cells were studied. Phosphorylation of ERK and ERK kinase (MEK1/2), as well as PP2A, PP2B, and PP2C serine/threonine phosphatase activiti…
Chromatin structure of the Arabidopsis thaliana Adh promoter: analysis of nucleosome positioning
Abstract The chromatin structure of the promoter and proximal 5′ transcribed region of the Arabidopsis thaliana Adh gene has been studied in three experimental models: whole plants under aerobic conditions in which the gene is repressed, whole plants under flooding-induced anaerobiosis, in which the expression of the gene occurs in some plant tissues and yeast cells in which the Arabidopsis Adh DNA had been cloned but is not expressed at all. Experiments of indirect end labelling after DNase I and micrococcal nuclease digestion of nuclei allowed us to conclude that no positioned nucleosomes exist in plant nuclei on the proximal region of the promoter (up to −350), probably due to the presen…
ACTIVIDAD DE LA SER/THR FOSFATASA PP2A Y REGULACIÓN EPIGENÉTICA DE GENES PRO-INFLAMATORIOS EN LA PANCREATITIS AGUDA
Objetivos 1) Estudiar el papel de las serin/treonin protein fosfatasas en la induccion de genes pro-inflamatorios en el pancreas en la pancreatitis aguda, 2) Investigar el papel de las serin/treonin fosfatasas en el mecanismo de accion de la pentoxifilina como agente inflamatorio en la PA. Diseno Modelo de PA necrotica en ratas inducida por taurocolato sodico al 3,5%. Determinacion en pancreas de ratas de la fosforilacion de ERK y MEK1/2 (western blotting), las actividades de las serin/treonin fosfatasas PP2A, PP2B y PP2C, la induccion de genes pro-inflamatorios (RT-PCR e immunoprecipitacion de la cromatina) y el reclutamiento de factores de transcripcion e histonas acetiltransferasas/deace…
Transcription of the MAT2A gene, coding for methionine adenosyltransferase, is up-regulated by E2F and Sp1 at a chromatin level during proliferation of liver cells
Methionine adenosyltransferase (MAT) is an essential enzyme because it catalyzes the formation of S-adenosylmethionine, the main methyl donor. Two MAT-encoding genes (MAT1A, MAT2A) are found in mammals. The latter is expressed in proliferating liver, dedifferentiation and cancer, whereas MAT1A is expressed in adult quiescent hepatocytes. Here, we report studies on the molecular mechanisms controlling the induction of MAT2A in regenerating rat liver and in proliferating hepatocytes. The MAT2A is up-regulated at two discrete moments during liver regeneration, as confirmed by RNApol-ChIP analysis. The first one coincides with hepatocyte priming (i.e. G0-G1 transition), while the second one tak…