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Department of Internal Medicine and Molecular Science, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, Osaka 565-0871, Japan [S. Ko., Y. S., Y. Mi., T. K., S. T., S. Ki., Y. N., M. N., Y. Ma.], and Department of Gastroenterology, Sumitomo Hospital, Osaka 530-0005, Japan [S. Ko., S. Ka.]
| ABSTRACT |
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| Introduction |
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Bak expression has been reported in normal gastrointestinal epithelium (2 , 3) . Strong Bak immunoreactivity has been shown to be present in the gastric epithelial cells lining the gastric pits and parietal cells, whereas the self-renewing mucous cells located below the gastric pits in the gastric neck region are immunonegative (5) . In the colon, Bak immunoreactivity has been shown to exist in the form of a gradient along the crypt-villus axis. The epithelial cells in the apical portions of the crypts, which are destined for programmed cell death, are intensely immunopositive, whereas the self-renewing population of cells, which are located in the base of the crypts, show a weaker immunostaining (5 , 6) . Therefore, in gastrointestinal epithelial tissues, the up-regulation of Bak expression during differentiation may help to ensure that cell turnover occurs in a normal fashion. Recently, apoptosis in gastric epithelial cells induced by Helicobacter pylori has been shown to be accompanied by an increased level of Bak expression (7) . It has also been shown that induction of apoptosis by sulindac sulfide in the rat normal small intestine cell line IEC 18 is accompanied by increased Bak expression (6) . Furthermore, in studies using the human colon cancer cell line HT 29, sodium butyrate-induced apoptosis has been shown to be associated with increased Bak levels (6 , 8) . These observations suggest that Bak plays an important role in modulating apoptosis in gastrointestinal epithelial cells.
Apoptosis is critical not only for tissue homeostasis but also in the pathogenesis of a variety of diseases, including cancer. The transformation of colorectal epithelial tissue to carcinomas has been shown to be associated with the progressive inhibition of apoptosis (6 , 9) . It has been reported that gastric and colorectal tumors have reduced Bak levels compared with normal mucosa, suggesting that a perturbation of bak-mediated apoptosis may contribute to the pathogenesis of gastric and colorectal cancers (10 , 11) . However, mutations of the bak gene have not been examined in the case of tumors, including gastrointestinal cancers. Therefore, to clarify any possible relationship between the mutation of the bak gene and the occurrence of gastrointestinal cancers, we carried out a SSCP2 analysis of bak in 24 primary gastric cancers (6 early-stage cancers and 18 advanced-stage cancers) and 20 primary colorectal cancers (6 early-stage cancers and 14 advanced-stage cancers).
| Materials and Methods |
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DNA Extraction.
Genomic DNA was extracted from a single 5-µm microdissected
paraffin-embedded section using DEXPAT (Takara Shuzo, Kyoto,
Japan).
SSCP and DNA Sequencing.
Primers located within the intronic sequences were used to amplify the
entire coding sequence of bak in five fragments of <262 bp each and
including all of the intron/exon boundaries (Table 1
; Ref. 12
). PCR amplification of each exon was performed
under standard conditions in a 10-µl reaction mixture containing 0.5
µl of template DNA, 0.5 µM each primer, 200
µM each deoxynucleotide triphosphate, 2.0 mM
MgCl2, 0.25 unit of Taq DNA polymerase
(Perkin-Elmer, Norwalk, CT), and 2 µl of 10x PCR buffer. The
reaction mixture was denatured for 5 min at 95°C and then incubated
for 40 cycles (denaturing at 95°C for 1 min, annealing at 55°C for
1 min, and extension at 72°C for 1 min). PCR products were diluted
with 90 µl of loading solution containing 90% formamide, 20
mM EDTA, 0.05% xylene cyanol, and 0.05% bromphenol blue;
denatured at 90°C for 5 min; and applied to 15% polyacrylamide gels
containing 1x Tris-glycine buffer. Electrophoresis was
performed at 300 V for 3 h at 10°C. The resulting gels were
stained with CYBR Gold Nucleic Acid Gel Stain (Molecular Probes,
Eugene, OR) and analyzed on a Fluor Imager 595 (Molecular Dynamics
Japan, Tokyo, Japan). DNA fragments of the mobility-shifted bands were
extracted from the gels by SSCP analysis and reamplified. The
resulting PCR products were sequenced directly by the Amplicycle
Sequencing Kit (Perkin-Elmer, Branchburg, NJ) using the same primers
used for PCR amplification. All of the mutations were verified by
repeated PCR and gel analyses under different SSCP conditions.
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| Results and Discussion |
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Gly substitution at codon 69; sample GC10T contained a T to C
transition in exon 6, leading to a Ile
Thr substitution at codon 188;
and sample GC21T contained a T to C transition in exon 6, leading to a
Phe
Ser substitution at codon 203 (Table 2)
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Leu substitution at codon 5; sample CRC12T contained a T to
C transition in exon 6, leading to a Ile
Thr substitution at codon
188. Samples CRC15T (which had a C to T transition in exon 2) and
CRC23T (which had a C to T transition in exon 2) had sequence
alterations but no amino acid amino acid alterations. Additional
studies showed that no sequence alteration was present in matched
nonneoplastic tissue samples of gastric or colorectal cancer
patients. This is the first report of mutations in the bak
gene in any type of human malignancy. Bak, a Bcl-2 family protein,
contains three conserved regions termed BH1, BH2 and BH3 and the
membrane-anchoring region (13)
. Bak has been shown to
increase apoptosis as a result of binding with
Bcl-xL, which inhibits the antiapoptotic effect
of Bcl-xL (13)
. The BH3 region is
critical for the ability of Bak to promote apoptosis and bind to the
Bcl-xL protein (13
, 14) . However, in
this study, there was no evidence of sequence alteration in exon 4,
which encodes the BH3 region, in any of the gastrointestinal cancers
examined. The membrane-anchoring region has also been shown to be
important for the apoptotic activity of Bak. In studies using truncated
Bak molecules, it has been reported that the truncated molecule, which
includes BH3 but not the membrane-anchoring region, retains
Bcl-xL binding capacity but exhibits a reduced
cell killing function due to altered subcellular localization
(13)
. We identified two missense mutations in the
membrane-anchoring region in gastric and colorectal cancers (samples
GC10T and CRC12T, codon 188; sample GC21T, codon 203). Therefore, it is
possible that in these cancers, the cell-killing activity of Bak is
reduced by amino acid alterations in the membrane-anchoring region.
Additional studies are needed to clarify the effects of bak
missense mutations observed in this study on cell killing function and
on subcellular localization.
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Recently, it has been reported that an artificial mutation can be present when formalin-fixed specimens are used for DNA extraction (15) . In this study, both tumor DNA and matched normal DNA were extracted from formalin-fixed specimens. However, bak sequence alterations were observed only in tumor DNA and not in normal DNA.
In conclusion, we have demonstrated several sequence alterations of the bak gene in gastrointestinal cancers. Missense bak gene alterations were observed in 3 of 24 (12.5%) gastric cancers and 2 of 20 (10.0%) colorectal cancers. This is the first report of missense mutations of this gene in any human malignant neoplasm and provides further support for the view that mutations in this gene serve to predispose bearers to the development of gastric and colorectal malignancies in at least a subset of cases. However, it is also possible that some or all of the sequence alterations we observed may represent polymorphisms.
| FOOTNOTES |
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1 To whom requests for reprints should be
addressed, at Department of Gastroenterology, Sumitomo Hospital, 5-2-2,
Nakanoshima, Kita-ku, Osaka 530-0005, Japan. ![]()
2 The abbreviations used are: SSCP, single-strand
conformational polymorphism; BH, Bcl-2 homology domain. ![]()
Received 2/11/00. Accepted 6/29/00.
| REFERENCES |
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