BRUNOL5 as a Novel Oncogene Is Epigenetically Regulated by Stilbenoids in Primary Liver Cancer Cells
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We previously discovered that a novel gene, BRUNOL5, is hypomethylated at the promoter region and upregulated in patients with primary liver cancer. Since DNA hypomethylation was shown to underlie up-regulation of genes with oncogenic functions, BRUNOL5 could potentially act as an oncogene. Interestingly, certain dietary compounds such as polyphenols with a stilbenoid ring have been demonstrated by us and others to suppress hypomethylated cancer-driving genes. In the present study, we investigate BRUNOL5 oncogenic functions and the role of two stilbenoids, resveratrol (RSV) and pterostilbene (PTS), in BRUNOL5 transcriptional regulation. Liver cancer cells, HepG2 and SkHep1, were treated with 15µM RSV or 10µM PTS for 9 days followed by the analysis of cell growth (trypan blue exclusion test), anchorage-independent growth (soft-agar assay), and invasiveness (Boyden chamber assay). The effect on BRUNOL5 promoter methylation and gene expression was assessed by pyrosequencing and QPCR, respectively. BRUNOL5 was then depleted in HepG2 cells using siRNA followed by RNA sequencing to establish gene expression profiles. BRUNOL5 was down-regulated by 95% in response to RSV and by 25–50% in response to PTS. This coincided with 10–15% hypermethylation of BRUNOL5 promoter. This effect on BRUNOL5 transcriptional regulation was associated with robust decrease in cell growth, anchorage independent growth and invasiveness. Interestingly, depletion of BRUNOL5 in HepG2 cells mimicked polyphenols’ anti-cancer effects. Further investigation by RNA sequencing in BRUNOL5-depleted cells established gene targets potentially regulated by BRUNOL5. We found 4,406 genes significantly differentially expressed in response to BRUNOL5 knockdown. The top downregulated genes included cancer-promoting genes such as FAIM2, AMOTL1, and MMP2; whereas tumor suppressor genes such as MT1G, CADH1, and ALDH1L1 were among genes with the highest upregulation. Our findings demonstrate that BRUNOL5 is a novel target of stilbenoids and acts as an oncogene in liver cancer. RSV and PTS may exert their anti-cancer effects, at least partially, through BRUNOL5 downregulation. UBC VP Academic Award, CFI John. R. Evans Leaders Fund, and BC Knowledge Development Fund granted to BS
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".