Identification of a novel gene HEPT3 that is overexpressed in human hepatocellular carcinoma and may function through its noncoding RNA
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- Published online on: August 1, 2007 https://doi.org/10.3892/ijo.31.2.293
- Pages: 293-301
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Abstract
Genetic alterations have been defined as the hallmark of cancers as they are responsible for the differences between normal and malignant phenotypes. A widely accepted approach to study genetic instability is to identify cancer-related genes, in particular, the two major groups of growth regulatory genes - oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes. Using the technique of suppression subtractive hybridisation, we identified a novel gene transcript, designated as HEPT3. RT-PCR demonstrated that HEPT3 was overexpressed in 87% (20/23) of HCC patients and in 4/5 HCC cell lines tested. Sequence analyses performed on the full-length cDNA revealed that HEPT3 is an intronless gene mapped to human chromosome 6q13-14. The gene transcript lacks an extensive open reading frame and contains an Alu sequence near the 5' terminus, indicating that HEPT3 encodes a noncoding RNA. Antisense studies on the HCC cell line HepG2 showed that, when HEPT3 expression level was reduced, cell proliferation rate was inhibited by ≈5-fold and cell colony formation was reduced by at least 50%. Our data suggest that the novel gene HEPT3 may function through its noncoding RNA and its overexpression may play a role in hepatocarcinogenesis.