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Peritoneal high-fat environment promotes peritoneal metastasis of gastric cancer cells through activation of NSUN2-mediated ORAI2 m5C modification

Oncogene volume 42, pages 1980–1993 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Peritoneal metastasis (PM) is an important metastatic modality of gastric cancer (GC).It is associated with poor prognosis. The underlying molecular mechanism of PM remains elusive. 5-Methylcytosine (m5C), a posttranscriptional RNA modification, involves in the progression of many tumors. However, its role in GC peritoneal metastasis remains unclear. In our study, transcriptome results suggested that NSUN2 expression was significantly upregulated in PM. And patients with high NSUN2 expression of PM predicted a worse prognosis. Mechanistically, NSUN2 regulates ORAI2 mRNA stability by m5C modification, thereby promoting ORAI2 expression and further promoting peritoneal metastasis and colonization of GC. YBX1 acts as a “reader” by binding to the ORAI2 m5C modification site. Following the uptake of fatty acids from omental adipocytes by GC cells, the transcription factor E2F1 was upregulated, which further promoted the expression of NSUN2 through cis-element. Briefly, these results revealed that peritoneal adipocytes provide fatty acid for GC cells, thus contributing to the elevation of E2F1 and NSUN2 through AMPK pathway, and upregulated NSUN2 activates the key gene ORAI2 through m5C modification, thereby promoting peritoneal metastasis and colonization of gastric cancer.

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Fig. 1: NSUN2 is highly expressed in gastric cancer with peritoneal metastasis and associated with GC peritoneal metastasis.
Fig. 2: NSUN2 prompted GC proliferation, migration, invasion and adhesion to peritoneum in vitro.
Fig. 3: Transcriptional factor E2F1 promotes the expression of NSUN2 in GC cells.
Fig. 4: Peritoneal high-fat environment activated transcriptional factor E2F1 through AMPK pathway.
Fig. 5: NSUN2-mediated m5C modification of ORAI2 maintains its stability.
Fig. 6: YBX1 recognizes the m5C modification of ORAI2 and regulates its mRNA stability.
Fig. 7: NSUN2 promotes GC malignant process by upregulating ORAI2 expression.
Fig. 8: NSUN2 promotes peritoneal metastasis by up-regulating ORAI2 expression in vivo.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and analysed during the current study are not publicly available due other members of our group need to use RNA-seq data but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (SJCX21_0622). We would like to thank the Core Facility of the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University for its help in the detection of experimental samples.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Kanghui Liu, Peng Xu, Jialun Lv.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of General Surgery, the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China

    Kanghui Liu, Peng Xu, Jialun Lv, Han Ge, Zhengyuan Yan, Shansong Huang, Bowen Li, Hao Xu, Li Yang, Zekuan Xu & Diancai Zhang

  2. Department of Surgery, Nanjing Lishui People’s Hospital, Nanjing, 211200, China

    Zhengyuan Yan

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Contributions

DZ conceptualized and supervised the research. KL, PX and JL designed and performed most experiments. HG, ZY performed animal experiments. SH and BL were engaged in biostatistics and bioinformatics analysis. HX, LY, and ZX is responsible for the collection of tissues and follow-up of patients.

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Correspondence to Diancai Zhang.

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Liu, K., Xu, P., Lv, J. et al. Peritoneal high-fat environment promotes peritoneal metastasis of gastric cancer cells through activation of NSUN2-mediated ORAI2 m5C modification. Oncogene 42, 1980–1993 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41388-023-02707-5

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