Human EWS-FLI protein levels and neomorphic functions show a complex, function-specific dose-response relationship in Drosophila
Ewing sarcoma (EwS) is a cancer that arises in the bones and soft tissues, typically driven by the Ewing's sarcoma breakpoint region 1-Friend leukemia virus integration 1 (EWS-FLI) oncogene. Implementation of genetically modified animal models of EwS has proved difficult largely owing to EWS-FL...
| Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | article |
| Status: | Published version |
| Publication Date: | 2024 |
| Country: | España |
| Institution: | Fundació Sant Joan de Déu |
| Repository: | r-FSJD. Repositorio Institucional de Producción Científica de la Fundació Sant Joan de Déu |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:fsjd.fundanetsuite.com:p26573 |
| Online Access: | https://fsjd.fundanetsuite.com/Publicaciones/ProdCientif/PublicacionFrw.aspx?id=26573 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Keyword: | Ewing sarcoma Ewing study model EWS-FLI GGAA microsatellite |
| Summary: | Ewing sarcoma (EwS) is a cancer that arises in the bones and soft tissues, typically driven by the Ewing's sarcoma breakpoint region 1-Friend leukemia virus integration 1 (EWS-FLI) oncogene. Implementation of genetically modified animal models of EwS has proved difficult largely owing to EWS-FLI's high toxicity. The EWS-FLI1FS frameshift variant that circumvents toxicity but is still able to perform key oncogenic functions provided the first study model in Drosophila. However, the quest for Drosophila lines expressing full-length, unmodified EWS-FLI remained open. Here, we show that EWS-FLI1FS's lower toxicity is owed to reduced protein levels caused by its frameshifted C-terminal peptide, and report new strategies through which we have generated Drosophila lines that express full-length, unmodified EWS-FLI. Using these lines, we have found that the upregulation of transcription from GGAA-microsatellites (GGAA mu Sats) presents a positive linear correlation within a wide range of EWS-FLI protein concentrations. In contrast, rather counterintuitively, GGAA mu Sats-independent transcriptomic dysregulation presents relatively minor differences across the same range, suggesting that GGAA mu Sat-dependent and -independent transcriptional upregulation present different kinetics of response with regards to changing EWS-FLI protein concentration. Our results underpin the functional relevance of varying EWS-FLI expression levels and provide experimental tools to investigate, in Drosophila, the effect of the EWS-FLI 'high' and 'low' states that have been reported and are suspected to be important for EwS in humans. |
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