: The non-canonical GC-5' splice sites (5'ss) are the most common exception (~1%) to the classical GT/AG splicing rule. They constitute weak 5'ss and can be regulated by splicing factors, so they are especially sensitive to genetic variations inducing the misrecognition of their respective exons. We aimed to investigate the GC-5'ss of the breast/ovarian cancer susceptibility genes, (exon 50), (exon 1), and (exon 12), and their dysregulation induced by DNA variants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Cancer is a global health problem accounting for nearly one in six deaths worldwide. Conventional treatments together with new therapies have increased survival to this devastating disease. However, the persistent challenges of treatment resistance and the limited therapeutic arsenal available for specific cancer types still make research in new therapeutic strategies an urgent need.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSplicing is controlled by a large set of regulatory elements (SREs) including splicing enhancers and silencers, which are involved in exon recognition. Variants at these motifs may dysregulate splicing and trigger loss-of-function transcripts associated with disease. Our goal here was to study the alternatively spliced exons 8 and 10 of the breast cancer susceptibility gene CHEK2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExcessive alcohol consumption impairs the immune system, induces oxidative stress, and triggers the activation of peripheral blood (PB) monocytes, thereby contributing to alcoholic liver disease (ALD). We analyzed the M1/M2 phenotypes of circulating classical monocytes and macrophage-derived monocytes (MDMs) in excessive alcohol drinkers (EADs). PB samples from 20 EADs and 22 healthy controls were collected for isolation of CD14+ monocytes and short-term culture with LPS/IFNγ, IL4/IL13, or without stimulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Disrupted pre-mRNA splicing is a frequent deleterious mechanism in hereditary cancer. We aimed to functionally analyze candidate spliceogenic variants of the breast cancer susceptibility gene CHEK2 by splicing reporter minigenes.
Methods: A total of 128 CHEK2 splice-site variants identified in the Breast Cancer After Diagnostic Gene Sequencing (BRIDGES) project (https://cordis.