| Literature DB >> 32714372 |
Fei Tang1, Yin Zhang1, Qing-Qing Huang1, Ming-Ming Qian1, Zhi-Xue Li1, Yan-Jing Li1, Bei-Ping Li2, Zheng-Liang Qiu3, Jun-Jie Yue2,4, Zhi-Yun Guo1.
Abstract
Enhancers are cis-regulatory DNA elements that positively regulate the transcription of target genes in a tissue-specific manner, and dysregulation of target genes could lead to various diseases, such as cancer. Recent studies have shown that enhancers can regulate microRNAs (miRNAs) and participate in their biological synthesis. However, the network of enhancer-regulated miRNAs across multiple cancers is still unclear. Here, a total of 2,418 proximal enhancer-miRNA interactions and 1,280 distal enhancer-miRNA interactions were identified through the integration of genomic distance, co-expression, and 3D genome data in 31 cancers. The results showed that both proximal and distal interactions exhibited a significant cancer type-specific feature trend at the tissue level rather than at the single-cell level, and there was a noteworthy positive correlation between the expression of the miRNA and the number of enhancers regulating the same miRNA in most cancers. Furthermore, we found that there was a high correlation between the formation of enhancer-miRNA pairs and the expression of enhancer RNAs (eRNAs) whether in distal or proximal regulation. The characteristics analysis showed that miRes (enhancers that regulated miRNAs) and non-miRes presented significant differences in sequence conservation, guanine-cytosine (GC) content, and histone modification signatures. Notably, GC content, H3K4me1, and H3K36me3 were present differently between distal and proximal regulation, suggesting that they might participate in chromosome looping of enhancer-miRNA interactions. Finally, we introduced a case study, enhancer: chr1:1186391-1186507 ∼ miR-200a was highly relevant to the survival of thyroid cancer patients and a cis-eQTL SNP on the enhancer affected the expression of the TNFRSF18 gene as a tumor suppressor.Entities:
Keywords: TCGA; cancer; enhancer; microRNA; transcriptional regulation
Year: 2020 PMID: 32714372 PMCID: PMC7344161 DOI: 10.3389/fgene.2020.00644
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Front Genet ISSN: 1664-8021 Impact factor: 4.599
FIGURE 1Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analyses and single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) analysis of enhancer–miRNA regulations. Number of pairs of proximal (A) or distal (B) regulations present in each cancer type. (C) Frequency of occurrence of enhancer–miRNA interactions appearing in 31 cancers. (D) scRNA-seq analysis of the expression of TSC22D1 in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) using t-SNE cluster. GO (E) and KEGG pathway (F) enrichment analyses of the target genes of miRNAs that are regulated by ubiquitously expressed enhancers.
FIGURE 2Correlation between miRNA expression and the number of regulating enhancers. (A) Principal component analysis (PCA) of the expression levels of miRNAs regulated by enhancers in 31 cancers. (B) Expressions of miRNAs that are regulated by different numbers of enhancers in bladder urothelial carcinoma (BLCA).
FIGURE 3There are significant differences in the sequence characteristics of miRes. (A) Pie chart of all enhancer transcripts in distal regulation. (B) Conservative score of the enhancer sequence using PhastCons in distal regulation. (C) GC content of the enhancer in distal regulation.
FIGURE 4Signal of H3k27ac within ±1 kb surrounding the center of the enhancer in distal regulation (A) and proximal regulation (B). Signal of H3k4me3 within ±1 kb surrounding the center of the enhancer in distal regulation (C) and proximal regulation (D). Signal of H3k4me1 within ±1 kb surrounding the center of the enhancer in distal regulation (E) and proximal regulation (F).
FIGURE 5Case study of miRes in thyroid carcinoma. (A) An example of an enhancer–miRNA regulation interaction (chr1:1186391–1186507 ∼ miR-200a). (B) Survival curve of hsa-miR-200a in thyroid cancer.