Cloning And Functional Research On Cancer Candidate Gene YPEL4

Cancers have become one of the two kinds of most serious diseases that threaten human beings (the other are Cardiovascular diseases). It is a critical prerequisite to understand the mechanisms underlying the causes of this kind of diseases, so that it is possible to cure the disease. As it known, mistakes in spatiotemporal expression of critical genes result in cancer. The identification of the molecular pathways that guide cancer morphogenesis will provide a basic understanding of how cancer is taken place. Zinc finger family is one of the largest human gene family, zinc finger proteins are thought to function as transcriptional regulators for nucleic acid binding. Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signal transduction pathways are among the most widespread mechanisms of eukaryotic cell regulation, and Many transcription factors are probably important MAPK targets.With the aim of identifying novel genes involved in human cancer deseases, a novel gene, YPEL4, was isolated from brain cDNA library. This gene map to chromosome llq and belong to zinc binding protein, coding for a protein which contains a domain of Yippee. In many species, such as chimpanzee, mouse, drosophila, and et. al, we discovered the homologues of YPEL4 and they present highly consensus during evolution, which suggests the potential importance of this subfamily. Expression assays present that YPEL4 is expressed in many cancer cell lines. With yeast two-hybrid system, an interacted partner of YPEL4, MVP, a lung resistance associated protein has been identified. The results of transcription activity assays show that overexpression of YPEL4 in COS7 cells can remarkably enhance the transcription-stimulation activity of ELK-1, which are downstream effector of MAPK pathway. After YPEL4 was interferenced, the transcription activity remarkably decreased. And MVP can inhibit the transcription activity of YPEL4. In conclusion, we suggest that YPEL4 probably take part in regulation of cell life progress through acting a role in MAPK pathway.