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  • Original Article
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Upregulation of miR-27a contributes to the malignant transformation of human bronchial epithelial cells induced by SV40 small T antigen

Abstract

The introduction of the Simian virus 40 (SV40) early region, the telomerase catalytic subunit (hTERT) and an oncogenic allele of H-Ras directly transforms primary human cells. SV40 small T antigen (ST), which forms a complex with protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) and inhibits PP2A activity, is believed to have a critical role in the malignant transformation of human cells. Recent evidence has shown that aberrant microRNA (miRNA) expression patterns are correlated with cancer development. Here, we identified miR-27a as a differentially expressed miRNA in SV40 ST-expressing cells. miR-27a is upregulated in SV40 ST-transformed human bronchial epithelial cells (HBERST). Suppression of miR-27a expression in HBERST cells or lung cancer cell lines (NCI-H226 and SK-MES-1) that exhibited high levels of miR-27a expression lead to cell growth arrested in the G0–G1 phase. In addition, suppression of miR-27a in HBERST cells attenuated the capacity of such cells to grow in an anchorage-independent manner. We also found that suppression of the PP2A B56γ expression resulted in upregulation of miR-27a similar to that achieved by the introduction of ST, indicating that dysregulation of miR-27a expression in ST-expressing cells was mediated by the ST–PP2A interaction. Moreover, we discovered that Fbxw7 gene encoding F-box/WD repeat-containing protein 7 was a potential miR-27a target validated by dual-luciferase reporter system analysis. The inverse correlation between miR-27a expression levels and Fbxw7 protein expression was further confirmed in both cell models and human tumor samples. Fbxw7 regulates cell-cycle progression through the ubiquitin-dependent proteolysis of a set of substrates, including c-Myc, c-Jun, cyclin E1 and Notch 1. Thus, promotion of cell growth arising from the suppression of Fbxw7 by miR-27a overexpression might be responsible for the viral oncoprotein ST-induced malignant transformation. These observations demonstrate that miR-27a functions as an oncogene in human tumorigenesis.

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Accession codes

Accessions

GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ

Abbreviations

ASO:

antisense oligonucleotide

Fbxw7:

F-box/WD repeat-containing protein 7

HBE cells:

human bronchial epithelial cells

hTERT :

human telomerase catalytic subunit

NC:

negative control

OA:

okadaic acid

PP2A:

protein phosphatase 2A

qRT–PCR:

quantitative real-time PCR

shB56γ:

small-hairpin RNA interference against the B56γ subunit

ST:

SV40 small T antigen

HBER cells:

cells expressing hTERT, the SV40 large T antigen (LT) and an oncogenic allele of H-Ras

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by program of Distinguished Young Scholar of NSFC (30925029, 30925036), a Key NSFC Program (30630055) and NSFC (30800930, 30771832, 30901211), National Key Basic Research and Development Program (2010CB912803), National High Technology Research and Development Key Program of China (2008AA062504), Ministry of Health of China (200902006), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (10ykjc05 and 10lgzd10), Guangdong Province Universities and Colleges Pearl River Scholar Funded Scheme GDUPS (2010).

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Wang, Q., Li, DC., Li, ZF. et al. Upregulation of miR-27a contributes to the malignant transformation of human bronchial epithelial cells induced by SV40 small T antigen. Oncogene 30, 3875–3886 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/onc.2011.103

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