Competitive endogenous RNA is an intrinsic component of EMT regulatory circuits and modulates EMT.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 30967542.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-09649-1 and PMC identifier 6456586.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) hypothesis suggests an intrinsic mechanism to regulate biological processes. However, whether the dynamic changes of ceRNAs can modulate miRNA activities remains controversial. Here, we examine the dynamics of ceRNAs during TGF-β-induced epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). We observe that TGFBI, a transcript highly induced during EMT in A549 cells, acts as the ceRNA for miR-21 to modulate EMT. We further identify FN1 as the ceRNA for miR-200c in the canonical SNAIL-ZEB-miR200 circuit in MCF10A cells. Experimental assays and computational simulations demonstrate that the dynamically induced ceRNAs are directly coupled with the canonical double negative feedback loops and are critical to the induction of EMT. These results help to establish the relevance of ceRNA in cancer EMT and suggest that ceRNA is an intrinsic component of the EMT regulatory circuit and may represent a potential target to disrupt EMT during tumorigenesis.
Medical subject headings
- Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition
- Gene Regulatory Networks
- MicroRNAs
- Neoplasms
- RNA, Messenger