Proteins drive cancer cells to change states

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

15-Dec-2014

Contact: Sarah McDonnell s_mcd@mit.edu 617-253-8923 Massachusetts Institute of Technology @MIT

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A new study from MIT implicates a family of RNA-binding proteins in the regulation of cancer, particularly in a subtype of breast cancer. These proteins, known as Musashi proteins, can force cells into a state associated with increased proliferation.

Biologists have previously found that this kind of transformation, which often occurs in cancer cells as well as during embryonic development, is controlled by transcription factors -- proteins that turn genes on and off. However, the new MIT research reveals that RNA-binding proteins also play an important role. Human cells have about 500 different RNA-binding proteins, which influence gene expression by regulating messenger RNA, the molecule that carries DNA's instructions to the rest of the cell.

"Recent discoveries show that there's a lot of RNA-processing that happens in human cells and mammalian cells in general," says Yarden Katz, a recent MIT PhD recipient and one of the lead authors of the new paper. "RNA is processed at several points within the cell, and this gives opportunities for RNA-binding proteins to regulate RNA at each point. We're very interested in trying to understand this unexplored class of RNA-binding proteins and how they regulate cell-state transitions."

Feifei Li of China Agricultural University is also a lead author of the paper, which appears in the journal eLife on Dec. 15. Senior authors of the paper are MIT biology professors Christopher Burge and Rudolf Jaenisch, and Zhengquan Yu of China Agricultural University.

Controlling cell states

Until this study, scientists knew very little about the functions of Musashi proteins. These RNA-binding proteins have traditionally been used to identify neural stem cells, in which they are very abundant. They have also been found in tumors, including in glioblastoma, a very aggressive form of brain cancer.

"Normally they're marking stem and progenitor cells, but they get turned on in cancers. That was intriguing to us because it suggested they might impose a more undifferentiated state on cancer cells," Katz says.

See more here:
Proteins drive cancer cells to change states