A functional variant in the transcriptional regulatory region of gene LOC344967 cosegregates with disease phenotype in familial nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

作者：Jiang Ri Cheng; Qin Hai De; Zeng Mu Sheng; Huang Wei; Feng Bing Jian; Zhang Feng; Chen Han Kui; Jia Wei Hua; Chen Li Zhen; Feng Qi Sheng; Zhang Ru Hua; Yu Xing Juan; Zheng Mei Zhen; Zeng Yi Xin^*

来源：Cancer Research, 2006, 66(2): 693-700.

DOI：10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-05-2166

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma is a common malignancy in Southeast Asian countries, and genetic background is a well-known component of the complexity underlying its tumorigenic process. We have mapped a nasopharyngeal carcinoma susceptibility locus to chromosome 4p15.1-q12 in a previous linkage study on nasopharyngeal carcinoma pedigrees. In this study provided in this communication, we screened all the genes in this region, with a focus on exons, promoters, and the exon-intron boundary to identify nasopharyngeal carcinoma-associated mutations or functional variants. Importantly, we found a novel gene (LOC344967) with a single nucleotide polymorphism -32G/A in the promoter region. This gene is a member of the acyl CoA thioesterase family that plays an important role in fatty acid metabolism and is involved in the progression of various types of tumors. The -32A variant was found cosegregated with the disease phenotype in the nasopharyngeal carcinoma pedigrees that we previously used for the linkage study. Moreover, this -32A variant creates an activator protein (AP-1)-binding site in the transcriptional regulatory region of LOC344967, which significantly enhanced the binding of AP-1 to the promoter region and the transcription activity of the promoter in vivo. Furthermore, the expression of LOC344967 was significantly up-regulated at both mRNA and protein levels in nasopharyngeal carcinoma cells sharing the -32G/A genotype compared with nasopharyngeal carcinoma cells with the -32G/G genotype. Collectively, these results provide evidence that the -32A variant is a functional sequence change and may be related to nasopharyngeal carcinoma susceptibility in the families studied.

• 出版日期2006-1-15
• 单位中山大学