Hypomethylation of GDNF family receptor alpha 1 promotes epithelial-mesenchymal transition and predicts metastasis of colorectal cancer

by Zhexu Dong, Lei Dai, Yong Zhang, Chao Fang, Gang Shi, Ye Chen, Junshu Li, Qin Wang, Jiamei Fu, Yan Yu, Wenshuang Wang, Lin Cheng, Yi Liu, Yi Lin, Yuan Wang, Qingnan Wang, Huiling Wang, Hantao Zhang, Yujing Zhang, Xiaolan Su, Shuang Zhang, Feng Wang, Meng Qiu, Zongguang Zhou, Hongxin Deng Tumor metastasis is the major cause of poor prognosis and mortality in colorectal cancer (CRC). However, early diagnosis of highly metastatic CRC is currently difficult. In the present study, we screened for a novel biomarker, GDNF family receptor alpha 1 (GFRA1) based on the expression and methyl ation data in CRC patients from The Cancer Genome Altlas (TCGA), followed by further analysis of the correlation between the GFRA1 expression, methylation, and prognosis of patients. Our results show DNA hypomethylation-mediated upregulation of GFRA1 in invasive CRC, and it was found to be correlate d with poor prognosis of CRC patients. Furthermore,GFRA1 methylation-modified sequences were found to have potential as methylation diagnostic markers of highly metastatic CRC. The targeted demethylation ofGFRA1 by dCas9-TET1CD and gRNA promoted CRC metastasisin vivo andin vitro. Mechanistically, demethylation ofGFRA1 induces epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) by promoting AKT phosphorylation and increasing c-Jun expression in CRC cells. Collectively, our findings indicate thatGFRA1 hypomethylation can promote CRC invasion via inducing EMT, and thus,GFRA1 methylation can be used as a biomarker f...
Source: PLoS Genetics - Category: Genetics & Stem Cells Authors: Source Type: research