Park, S. S. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2019

Assortment of Stauntonia hexaphylla and Cornus officinalis protect against testosterone-induced benign prostatic hyperplasia through anti-inflammatory and anti-proliferative activity

Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is a progressive pathological condition associated with proliferation of prostatic tissues, prostate enlargement, and lower-urinary tract symptoms. However, the mechanism underlying the pathogenesis of BPH is not clear. The aim of this study was to investigate the protective effects of Stauntonia hexaphylla and Cornus officinalis (SC extract) on a testosterone propionate (TP)-induced BPH model. For in vitro experiments, a human prostate adenocarcinoma cell line was used to perform western blotting for androgen receptor (AR), prostate specific antigen (PSA), and 5-reductase type 2. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into 8 groups as follows for the in vivo experiments: control, BPH, Fina, Saw, SC25, SC50, SC100, and SC200. To induce BPH, all rats, except those in the control group, were daily administered with subcutaneous injections of TP (5 mg/kg), and orally treated with appropriate PBS/drugs for 4 consecutive weeks. Our findings indicated that the SC treatment significantly reduced the prostate size and downregulated the serum testosterone and DHT levels in BPH rats. The histological examination revealed that SC treatment markedly recovered the TP-induced abnormalities and reduced the prostatic hyperplasia. In addition, in vitro and in vivo western blotting indicated that SC treatment significantly downregulated the AR, PSA, and 5-reductase type 2 expression, while an immunohistochemistry examination revealed that the SC extract significantly reduced the expression of type 2 5-reductase and proliferating cell nuclear antigen positive cell count. Collectively, our findings demonstrated that SC extract attenuates BPH through anti-proliferative and anti-inflammation activities and might be useful in the clinical treatment of BPH.

cancer biology↗

bioRxiv2019

Principles of RNA processing from analysis of enhanced CLIP maps for 150 RNA binding proteins.

A critical step in uncovering rules of RNA processing is to study the in vivo regulatory networks of RNA binding proteins (RBPs). Crosslinking and immunoprecipitation (CLIP) methods enabled mapping RBP targets transcriptome-wide, but methodological differences present challenges to large-scale integrated analysis across datasets. The development of enhanced CLIP (eCLIP) enabled the large-scale mapping of targets for 150 RBPs in K562 and HepG2, creating a unique resource of RBP interactomes profiled with a standardized methodology in the same cell types. Here we describe our analysis of 223 enhanced (eCLIP) datasets characterizing 150 RBPs in K562 and HepG2 cell lines, revealing a range of binding modalities, including highly resolved positioning around splicing signals and mRNA untranslated regions that associate with distinct RBP functions. Quantification of enrichment for repetitive and abundant multi-copy elements reveals 70% of RBPs have enrichment for non-mRNA element classes, enables identification of novel ribosomal RNA processing factors and sites and suggests that association with retrotransposable elements reflects multiple RBP mechanisms of action. Analysis of spliceosomal RBPs indicates that eCLIP resolves AQR association after intronic lariat formation (enabling identification of branch points with single-nucleotide resolution) and provides genome-wide validation for a branch point-based scanning model for 3 splice site recognition. Further, we show that eCLIP peak co-occurrences across RBPs enables the discovery of novel co-interacting RBPs. Finally, we present a protocol for visualization of RBP:RNA complexes in the eCLIP workflow using biotin and standard chemiluminescent visualization reagents, enabling simplified confirmation of ribonucleoprotein enrichment without radioactivity. This work illustrates the value of integrated analysis across eCLIP profiling of RBPs with widely distinct functions to reveal novel RNA biology. Further, our quantification of both mRNA and other element association will enable further research to identify novel roles of RBPs in regulating RNA processing.

genomics↗