Functional demonstration of a mortality phenotype associated with 4cen-q23

Forsyth, Nicholas R. (2000) Functional demonstration of a mortality phenotype associated with 4cen-q23. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Normal human keratinocytes possess a finite replicative lifespan whereas most advanced squamous cells carcinomas are immortal. The mechanisms, whose abrogation's can be considered necessary to achieve immortality, include those involving the negative cell cycle regulators p53, p16INK4A, and the telomere repair reverse-transcriptase enzyme, telomerase. Other specific chromosomes have also been demonstrated to carry functions whose loss is necessary for the development of immortality, through immortal phenotype reversion upon reintroduction into an immortal cell line. We demonstrate here the phenotypic reversion of immortal HNSCC-derived keratinocyte cell lines to a mortal growth-arrest upon reintroduction of a resistance marker tagged wild-type human chromosome 4. We further demonstrate that this phenotypic reversion occurs only in cell lines, which display LOH on 4q (BICR6 and BICR31), and not in those with intact endogenous chromosome 4 copies (BICR3 and BICR19), and that it is chromosome 4-specific, chromosomes 6, 11, and 15 having no effect on proliferative lifespan following introduction into BICR6 by MMCT. Through XMMCT-based truncated chromosomal fragment generation the functional complementation was localised to 4cen-q23, whilst fine mapping in segregants arising from the MMCT experiments identified an approximate 1.5Mb locus containing a minimal number of candidate genes.
Through biological assay we have further determined the growth-arrest to have characteristics of crisis. This was determined through low BrdU incorporation balanced with high levels of apoptosis to statistically significant levels (less than 0.05). We found no evidence for involvement of telomeric attrition in the observed phenotype, through insufficient phenotypic lag (3-10 MPD) and growth-arrest in the presence of ectopic hTERT expression, suggesting the operation of an alternative mechanism. This suggests the presence of gene(s) at 4cen-q23 whose loss is advantageous to the development of immortality in advanced tumours including HNSCC.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0254 Neoplasms. Tumors. Oncology (including Cancer)
• Colleges/Schools: College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Cancer Sciences > Beatson Institute of Cancer Research
• Supervisor's Name: Supervisor, not known
• Date of Award: 2000
• Depositing User: Adam Swann
• Unique ID: glathesis:2000-8487
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 06 Oct 2017 13:15
• Last Modified: 06 Oct 2017 13:15
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/8487