NF-κB Hyper-Activation by HTLV-1 Tax Induces Cellular Senescence, but Can Be Alleviated by the Viral Anti-Sense Protein HBZ

Activation of I-κB kinases (IKKs) and NF-κB by the human T lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) trans-activator/oncoprotein, Tax, is thought to promote cell proliferation and transformation. Paradoxically, expression of Tax in most cells leads to drastic up-regulation of cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors, p21CIP1/WAF1 and p27KIP1, which cause p53-/pRb-independent cellular senescence. Here we demonstrate that p21CIP1/WAF1-/p27KIP1-mediated senescence constitutes a checkpoint against IKK/NF-κB hyper-activation. Senescence induced by Tax in HeLa cells is attenuated by mutations in Tax that reduce IKK/NF-κB activation and prevented by blocking NF-κB using a degradation-resistant mutant of I-κBα despite constitutive IKK activation. Small hairpin RNA-mediated knockdown indicates that RelA induces this senescence program by acting upstream of the anaphase promoting complex and RelB to stabilize p27KIP1 protein and p21CIP1/WAF1 mRNA respectively. Finally, we show that down-regulation of NF-κB by the HTLV-1 anti-sense protein, HBZ, delay or prevent the onset of Tax-induced senescence. We propose that the balance between Tax and HBZ expression determines the outcome of HTLV-1 infection. Robust HTLV-1 replication and elevated Tax expression drive IKK/NF-κB hyper-activation and trigger senescence. HBZ, however, modulates Tax-mediated viral replication and NF-κB activation, thus allowing HTLV-1-infected cells to proliferate, persist, and evolve. Finally, inactivation of the senescence checkpoint can facilitate persistent NF-κB activation and leukemogenesis

QCD and strongly coupled gauge theories : challenges and perspectives

We highlight the progress, current status, and open challenges of QCD-driven physics, in theory and in experiment. We discuss how the strong interaction is intimately connected to a broad sweep of physical problems, in settings ranging from astrophysics and cosmology to strongly coupled, complex systems in particle and condensed-matter physics, as well as to searches for physics beyond the Standard Model. We also discuss how success in describing the strong interaction impacts other fields, and, in turn, how such subjects can impact studies of the strong interaction. In the course of the work we offer a perspective on the many research streams which flow into and out of QCD, as well as a vision for future developments.Peer reviewe

Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes

Cancer is driven by genetic change, and the advent of massively parallel sequencing has enabled systematic documentation of this variation at the whole-genome scale(1-3). Here we report the integrative analysis of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We describe the generation of the PCAWG resource, facilitated by international data sharing using compute clouds. On average, cancer genomes contained 4-5 driver mutations when combining coding and non-coding genomic elements; however, in around 5% of cases no drivers were identified, suggesting that cancer driver discovery is not yet complete. Chromothripsis, in which many clustered structural variants arise in a single catastrophic event, is frequently an early event in tumour evolution; in acral melanoma, for example, these events precede most somatic point mutations and affect several cancer-associated genes simultaneously. Cancers with abnormal telomere maintenance often originate from tissues with low replicative activity and show several mechanisms of preventing telomere attrition to critical levels. Common and rare germline variants affect patterns of somatic mutation, including point mutations, structural variants and somatic retrotransposition. A collection of papers from the PCAWG Consortium describes non-coding mutations that drive cancer beyond those in the TERT promoter(4); identifies new signatures of mutational processes that cause base substitutions, small insertions and deletions and structural variation(5,6); analyses timings and patterns of tumour evolution(7); describes the diverse transcriptional consequences of somatic mutation on splicing, expression levels, fusion genes and promoter activity(8,9); and evaluates a range of more-specialized features of cancer genomes(8,10-18).Peer reviewe