Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered new insights into the production and regulation of a class of noncoding RNAs and how alterations in their signatures diversify and modulate the transcriptome of three major types of cancer, according to findings in . Downstream-of-gene (DoG) transcripts are a class of noncoding RNAs, or RNA molecules that are not translated into proteins. DoGs are produced when the machinery that produces normal protein-coding mRNA continues past the end of the gene and occurs in response to different cellular stressors, including viral infection, heat shock and osmotic stress.
Recent work has suggested that DoGs are produced in response to different stress stimuli that ultimately contribute to the development of diseases, including cancer. However, it has remained unknown how the production of DoGs is regulated and whether alterations in DoG RNA signatures exist in . In the current study, the investigators performed transcriptomic analyses of paired tumor tissue and healthy tissue samples from patients with , , , as well as in cancer cell lines.
The scientists discovered a variety of DoG RNA signatures that were uniquely expressed in both the healthy tissue and in the tumor tissue, and that DoG RNAs were differentially expressed in breast, liver and colon tissues. Furthermore, the scientists found that different DoG RNA signatures were expressed in tumors relative to the normal tissues and during different stages of tumor progression, which is.