Background
Colon cancer is one of the most frequent and lethal malignancies worldwide, and the 5-year survival rate is less than 50% [
1,
2]. Given the high level in incidence rate and mortality rate of colon cancer, it would be important to better understand the biological basis of tumor development and progression, to develop markers for assessing onset or prediction of therapy outcome, as well as to identify targets for the development of novel therapies. Colon cancer may be considered the final step of a progressive imbalance between mucosal cell proliferation and apoptosis due to the activation of oncogenes and the inactivation of tumor suppressor genes [
3‐
5]. The evaluation of the clinical utility of each of these genes would require multiple consecutive experiments with hundreds of tumor specimens. This would be both time-consuming as well as impractical for more than a handful of genes. Microarray technology provides a new and promising tool that allows the detection of a large variety of parameters simultaneously, and will be of importance in the fight against colon cancer.
Argonaute proteins are present in all RNA-induced silencing complexes (RISC) reported to date and are now the best defined protein component of the RNA interference (RNAi) machinery [
6]. Humans have eight Argonaute-like proteins, four of which fall into the eIF2C/AGO subfamily (EIF2C1/hAGO1, EIF2C2/hAGO2, EIF2C3/hAGO3, and EIF2C4/hAGO4) while the remainders are the PIWI subfamily (PIWIL1/HIWI, PIWIL2/HILI, PIWIL3, and PIWIL4/HIWI2) [
7]. The AGO subfamily is present in animals, plants, and fission yeast. Proteins of this subfamily use small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and/or microRNAs (miRNAs) as sequence specific guides in both transcriptional and posttranscriptional silencing mechanisms [
8]. It is postulated that eIF2C proteins might have regulatory functions in cancer stem cell self-renewal through the RNA-mediated gene silencing mechanism as a component of RISC. In contrast to the AGO subfamily, the PIWI subfamily has been identified only in animals. The
PIWI subfamily genes are expressed mainly in germ cells, whereas
AGO subfamily genes are ubiquitously expressed. Consistent with their expression patterns, PIWI proteins may participate in germ cell proliferation and their overexpression may cause germ cell malignancy development [
9]. Although Argonaute proteins are considered to play important roles in RNA interference, stem cell self-renewal and translational regulation, relatively little is known about their functions in human disease. In the present study, we constructed a tissue microarray containing 150 specimens from adjacent non-cancer tissue and colon cancer tissue and assayed the expression of eight members of human Argonaute family by immunohistochemistry on consecutive formalin-fixed tissue microarray sections. The aim was to obtain a comprehensive survey of the expression of Argonaute proteins in colon cancer and identify their potential roles in tumor development and progression.
Discussion
Here, we performed a first systematic expression analysis of human Argonaute proteins on a cohort of 75 Chinese colon cancer specimens and subsequently identified potential roles for Argonaute proteins in the development and progression of colon cancer. Because of the lack of commercially available antibodies against Argonaute proteins, we prepared eight rabbit polyclonal antibodies that recognized human Argonaute proteins efficiently. With the antibodies, we detected the tissue distribution of EIF2C1-4 and PIWIL1-4 by immunohistochemistry on tissue microarray.
Although several human Argonaute proteins have been identified, relatively little is known about their functions in human disease. AGO subfamily members are components essential for siRNA-mediated gene silencing in mammalian cells and involved in the effecter step of mammalian RNAi [
12,
13]. Recent studies demonstrate that the human
EIF2C1 gene is located on the short arm of chromosome 1 in the region 1p34-p35. This genomic region is frequently lost in human cancers such as Wilms tumors, neuroblastoma, and carcinomas of the breast, liver, and colon [
14]. The human
EIF2C1 gene is ubiquitously expressed at low to medium levels, and
EIF2C1 expression was found to be elevated in Wilms tumors that lacked functional copies of the Wilms tumor suppressor gene
WT1 [
14]. Together, these findings could make human
EIF2C1 an interesting candidate gene for potential involvement in neoplastic development. In our study, it should be noted that positive reaction to each AGO in colon cancer tissue was significantly higher than that in adjacent non-cancerous tissues. The relationship of AGO subfamily with colon cancer has not been completely elucidated. Perhaps through RNAi-related pathways or possibly also through distinct mechanisms, AGO subfamily members have an important role in the progression of colon cancer.
As a subfamily of Argonaute proteins, PIWI proteins are expressed in the germline and in somatic cells as well [
15]. Four PIWI-like proteins have been identified in Homo sapiens. Unlike AGO subfamily proteins, PIWI subfamily proteins do not associate with siRNAs and/or miRNAs, or they do so to a lesser extent [
9]. Recently, it has become clear that PIWI subfamily proteins bind to a third class of small RNAs called PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) [
16‐
19]. piRNAs and PIWIs appear to be involved in the epigenetic control of gene expression, the control of mRNA stability, transposon silencing and translation regulation [
6,
20,
21]. Elevated expression of PIWI subfamily has been reported in several human tumor entities. First, PIWIL1 expression has been analysed in male germline cells, showing that mRNA levels of
PIWIL1 was upregulated in the occurrence of seminomas, that is, a type of testicular germ cell tumors [
22]. Liu et al. [
23] showed that the percentage of cells that expressed PIWIL1 increased from 10% in normal gastric tissues to 76% in gastric cancer. In addition, expression of the PIWIL2 protein was also found in different tumors examined, including prostate, breast, pancreatic, gastrointestinal, ovarian and endometrial cancer of human and in breast tumors, rhabdomyosarcoma and medulloblastoma of mouse [
24]. Our investigation showed that the positive rate of PIWI protein expression in colon cancer tissue was remarkably higher than that in non-cancer tissue. These results confirm the notion derived from in vitro experiments that PIWI members might be induced by oncogenic event [
22‐
26]. A possible involvement of PIWI subfamily in the development and progression of colon cancer is proposed.
In order to identify markers associated with clinicopathological characteristics of colon cancer patients, the relationship between sex, age, histological grade, metastasis, Duke's classification, and protein expression needed additional research. Previous studies rarely considered the clinical meaning of the presence of AGOs and PIWIs in colon cancer. In the present study, we found the positive correlation of EIF2C2, EIF2C3, EIF2C4 and PIWIL4 with tumor distant metastasis. It is suggested that EIF2C2-4 and PIWIL4 are associated with tumor progression to advanced stage and may promote tumor invasion. However, there were no statistical differences for each protein expression among sex, age, histological grade and Duke's stage. Larger studies with a higher number of samples are necessary to confirm these results and to identify the prognostic value of Argonaute proteins in colon cancer.
A goal of this project is to identify biomarkers occurring in colonic carcinogenesis and contributing to colon cancer development and progression. Of the EIF2C1-4 and PIWIL1-4 analyzed by logistic regression, we observed that an increased expression of EIF2C1 and PIWIL2 was significantly associated with occurrence of colon cancer tissue compared with non-cancer tissue. This is of potential clinical importance for early diagnosis. The question that remains to be discussed is how Argonaute proteins play an important role in colonic carcinogenesis. It has been postulated that mutations or overexpression of several Argonaute proteins might cause cancer stem cells to unlimited self-renewal and aberrant differentiation, resulting in a heterogeneous population of cells [
27,
28]. According to the cancer stem cells hypothesis, EIF2C1 and PIWIL2 proteins might play a role in the balance between colonic cancer stem cells self-renewal and division in association with small RNAs' pathway. A disturbance in this balance may have strong impact on neoplastic development [
26]. Coincidentally, several previous studies have reported that the gene silencing of PIWIs by RNAi or antisense technology inhibited the growth of cancer cells and induced cell cycle arrest in G2/M phase in human gastric cancer and seminomas [
23,
24], which supported the issue that overexpression of Argonaute members was associated with proliferation and apoptosis of cancer stem cell.
The interaction of Argonaute proteins with small RNAs or other part of RISC involved in carcinogenesis has not been completely elucidated. Gene specific translational control induced by some miRNA species has been reported to have an effect on cancer development [
29]. As a component of RISC, Argonaute proteins bind to miRNAs or piRNAs, and aberrant regulation of these small RNAs by Argonaute proteins might induce the malignant phenotype of cells. SND1, also reported to be a component of RISC, is overexpressed in human colon cancer tissues, even in early-stage lesions [
30‐
32]. The relationship of SND1 with Argonaute proteins was still unclear. Paukku et al. [
30] reported that the effect of SND1 through 3'-untranslated region of angiotensin II type 1 receptor was independent of EIF2C2, a known SND1 partner, and was thus RISC-independent. Identification of target mRNA species and interacting partners of Argonaute proteins might provide us with further insights into more precise roles of Argonaute proteins in colonic carcinogenesis [
31].
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors' contributions
LL prepared tumor tissue arrays block, carried out the immunohistochemical staining, performed the statistical analysis, and drafted the manuscript. CHY participated in design and preparation of antibodies, and collected the human tissue and clinicopathological data. HJG reviewed the slides, evaluated the results of immunohistochemical staining and corrected the manuscript. YML designed and conducted the study. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.