A new assay for measuring chromosome instability (CIN) and identification of drugs that elevate CIN in cancer cells.

BACKGROUND: Aneuploidy is a feature of most cancer cells that is often accompanied by an elevated rate of chromosome mis-segregation termed chromosome instability (CIN). While CIN can act as a driver of cancer genome evolution and tumor progression, recent findings point to the existence of a threshold level beyond which CIN becomes a barrier to tumor growth and therefore can be exploited therapeutically. Drugs known to increase CIN beyond the therapeutic threshold are currently few in number, and the clinical promise of targeting the CIN phenotype warrants new screening efforts. However, none of the existing methods, including the in vitro micronuclei (MNi) assay, developed to quantify CIN, is entirely satisfactory. METHODS: We have developed a new assay for measuring CIN. This quantitative assay for chromosome mis-segregation is based on the use of a non-essential human artificial chromosome (HAC) carrying a constitutively expressed EGFP transgene. Thus, cells that inherit the HAC display green fluorescence, while cells lacking the HAC do not. This allows the measurement of HAC loss rate by routine flow cytometry. RESULTS: Using the HAC-based chromosome loss assay, we have analyzed several well-known anti-mitotic, spindle-targeting compounds, all of which have been reported to induce micronuclei formation and chromosome loss. For each drug, the rate of HAC loss was accurately measured by flow cytometry as a proportion of non-fluorescent cells in the cell population which was verified by FISH analysis. Based on our estimates, despite their similar cytotoxicity, the analyzed drugs affect the rates of HAC mis-segregation during mitotic divisions differently. The highest rate of HAC mis-segregation was observed for the microtubule-stabilizing drugs, taxol and peloruside A. CONCLUSION: Thus, this new and simple assay allows for a quick and efficient screen of hundreds of drugs to identify those affecting chromosome mis-segregation. It also allows ranking of compounds with the same or similar mechanism of action based on their effect on the rate of chromosome loss. The identification of new compounds that increase chromosome mis-segregation rates should expedite the development of new therapeutic strategies to target the CIN phenotype in cancer cells

Re-engineering an alphoid-HAC-based vector to enable high-throughput analyses of gene function

Human artificial chromosome (HAC)-based vectors represent an alternative technology for gene delivery and expression with a potential to overcome the problems caused by the use of viral-based vectors. The recently developed alphoid(tetO)-HAC has an advantage over other HAC vectors because it can be easily eliminated from cells by inactivation of the HAC kinetochore via binding of tTS chromatin modifiers to its centromeric tetO sequences. This provides unique control for phenotypes induced by genes loaded into the alphoid(tetO)-HAC. However, inactivation of the HAC kinetochore requires transfection of cells by a retrovirus vector, a step that is potentially mutagenic. Here, we describe an approach to re-engineering the alphoid(tetO)-HAC that allows verification of phenotypic changes attributed to expression of genes from the HAC without a transfection step. In the new HAC vector, a tTS-EYFP cassette is inserted into a gene-loading site along with a gene of interest. Expression of the tTS generates a self-regulating fluctuating heterochromatin on the alphoid(tetO)-HAC that induces fast silencing of the genes on the HAC without significant effects on HAC segregation. This silencing of the HAC-encoded genes can be readily recovered by adding doxycycline. The newly modified alphoid(tetO)-HAC-based system has multiple applications in gene function studies

Generation of a conditionally self-eliminating HAC gene delivery vector through incorporation of a tTAVP64 expression cassette

Human artificial chromosome (HAC)-based vectors represent an alternative technology for gene delivery and expression with a potential to overcome the problems caused by virus-based vectors. The recently developed alphoid(tetO)-HAC has an advantage over other HAC vectors because it can be easily eliminated from cells by inactivation of the HAC kinetochore via binding of chromatin modifiers, tTA or tTS, to its centromeric tetO sequences. This provides a unique control for phenotypes induced by genes loaded into the HAC. The alphoid(tetO)-HAC elimination is highly efficient when a high level of chromatin modifiers as tetR fusion proteins is achieved following transfection of cells by a retrovirus vector. However, such vectors are potentially mutagenic and might want to be avoided under some circumstances. Here, we describe a novel system that allows verification of phenotypic changes attributed to expression of genes from the HAC without a transfection step. We demonstrated that a single copy of tTA(VP64) carrying four tandem repeats of the VP16 domain constitutively expressed from the HAC is capable to generate chromatin changes in the HAC kinetochore that are not compatible with its function. To adopt the alphoid(tetO)-HAC for routine gene function studies, we constructed a new TAR-BRV- tTA(VP64) cloning vector that allows a selective isolation of a gene of interest from genomic DNA in yeast followed by its direct transfer to bacterial cells and subsequent loading into the loxP site of the alphoid(tetO)-HAC in hamster CHO cells from where the HAC may be MMCT-transferred to the recipient human cells

Protecting a transgene expression from the HAC-based vector by different chromatin insulators

Human artificial chromosomes (HACs) are vectors that offer advantages of capacity and stability for gene delivery and expression. Several studies have even demonstrated their use for gene complementation in gene-deficient recipient cell lines and animal transgenesis. Recently, we constructed an advance HAC-based vector, alphoid(tetO)-HAC, with a conditional centromere. In this HAC, a gene-loading site was inserted into a centrochromatin domain critical for kinetochore assembly and maintenance. While by definition this domain is permissive for transcription, there have been no long-term studies on transgene expression within centrochromatin. In this study, we compared the effects of three chromatin insulators, cHS4, gamma-satellite DNA, and tDNA, on the expression of an EGFP transgene inserted into the alphoid(tetO)-HAC vector. Insulator function was essential for stable expression of the transgene in centrochromatin. In two analyzed host cell lines, a tDNA insulator composed of two functional copies of tRNA genes showed the highest barrier activity. We infer that proximity to centrochromatin does not protect genes lacking chromatin insulators from epigenetic silencing. Barrier elements that prevent gene silencing in centrochromatin would thus help to optimize transgenesis using HAC vectors. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00018-013-1362-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

A portable BRCA1-HAC (human artificial chromosome) module for analysis of BRCA1 tumor suppressor function

BRCA1 is involved in many disparate cellular functions, including DNA damage repair, cell-cycle checkpoint activation, gene transcriptional regulation, DNA replication, centrosome function and others. The majority of evidence strongly favors the maintenance of genomic integrity as a principal tumor suppressor activity of BRCA1. At the same time some functional aspects of BRCA1 are not fully understood. Here, a HAC (human artificial chromosome) module with a regulated centromere was constructed for delivery and expression of the 90 kb genomic copy of the BRCA1 gene into BRCA1-deficient human cells. A battery of functional tests was carried out to demonstrate functionality of the exogenous BRCA1. In separate experiments, we investigated the role of BRCA1 in maintenance of heterochromatin integrity within a human functional kinetochore. We demonstrated that BRCA1 deficiency results in a specific activation of transcription of higher-order alpha-satellite repeats (HORs) assembled into heterochromatin domains flanking the kinetochore. At the same time no detectable elevation of transcription was observed within HORs assembled into centrochromatin domains. Thus, we demonstrated a link between BRCA1 deficiency and kinetochore dysfunction and extended previous observations that BRCA1 is required to silence transcription in heterochromatin in specific genomic loci. This supports the hypothesis that epigenetic alterations of the kinetochore initiated in the absence of BRCA1 may contribute to cellular transformation