Publications by authors named "Laia Pique"

Article Synopsis
  • Melanoma becomes metastatic when special skin cells change and start to move and invade other body parts, similar to certain nervous system cells.
  • Researchers found that changes in DNA methylation are important for this process, and a specific protein called NR2F2-Iso2 plays a key role in helping melanoma cells spread.
  • The study shows that when this protein is turned back on due to changes in DNA, it helps melanoma cells act more like these other cell types, leading to further growth and spread in the body.
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Tumors have aberrant proteomes that often do not match their corresponding transcriptome profiles. One possible cause of this discrepancy is the existence of aberrant RNA modification landscapes in the so-called epitranscriptome. Here, we report that human glioma cells undergo DNA methylation-associated epigenetic silencing of NSUN5, a candidate RNA methyltransferase for 5-methylcytosine.

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Human tumors show altered patterns of protein isoforms that can be related to the dysregulation of messenger RNA alternative splicing also observed in transformed cells. Although somatic mutations in core spliceosome components and their associated factors have been described in some cases, almost nothing is known about the contribution of distorted epigenetic patterns to aberrant splicing. Herein, we show that the splicing RNA-binding protein CELF2 is targeted by promoter hypermethylation-associated transcriptional silencing in human cancer.

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Time-lapse monitoring of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) embryos may help to predict developmental success and increase birth and embryonic stem cells (ESC) derivation rates. Here, the development of ICSI fertilized embryos and of SCNT embryos, non-treated or treated with either psammaplin A (PsA) or vitamin C (VitC), was monitored, and the ESC derivation rates from the resulting blastocysts were determined. Blastocyst rates were similar among PsA-treated and VitC-treated SCNT embryos and ICSI embryos, but lower for non-treated SCNT embryos.

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