Characterization of p53/p63/p73 and Myc expressions during embryogenesis of the sea urchin.

Dev Dyn

Department of Molecular Biology Cell Biology Biochemistry, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.

Published: March 2024

AI Article Synopsis

  • Some marine invertebrates, like sea urchins, seem to resist tumor development, leading researchers to study the genes involved in their embryonic development, particularly Myc and p53/p63/p73, which are known to interact in mammals.
  • During sea urchin embryogenesis, p53/p63/p73 levels decrease after fertilization while Myc levels increase, and both proteins are present in blastomeres, but overexpression of either leads to developmental issues and DNA damage.
  • The findings suggest that p53/p63/p73 plays a key role in regulating cell differentiation, whereas Myc causes disorganized structures without directly affecting typical oncogene pathways.

Article Abstract

Background: Some marine invertebrate organisms are considered not to develop tumors due to unknown mechanisms. To gain an initial insight into how tumor-related genes may be expressed and function during marine invertebrate development, we here leverage sea urchin embryos as a model system and characterize the expressions of Myc and p53/p63/p73 which are reported to function synergistically in mammalian models as an oncogene and tumor suppressor, respectively.

Results: During sea urchin embryogenesis, a combo gene of p53/p63/p73 is found to be maternally loaded and decrease after fertilization both in transcript and protein, while Myc transcript and protein are zygotically expressed. p53/p63/p73 and Myc proteins are observed in the cytoplasm and nucleus of every blastomere, respectively, throughout embryogenesis. Both p53/p63/p73 and Myc overexpression results in compromised development with increased DNA damage after the blastula stage. p53/p63/p73 increases the expression of parp1, a DNA repair/cell death marker gene, and suppresses endomesoderm gene expressions. In contrast, Myc does not alter the expression of specification genes or oncogenes yet induces disorganized morphology.

Conclusions: p53/p63/p73 appears to be important for controlling cell differentiation, while Myc induces disorganized morphology yet not through conventional oncogene regulations or apoptotic pathways during embryogenesis of the sea urchin.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/dvdy.656DOI Listing

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