Induction of polyploidy by nuclear fusion mechanism upon decreased expression of the nuclear envelope protein LAP2β in the human osteosarcoma cell line U2OS

Shirley Oren Ben-Shoshan, Amos J. Simon, Jasmine Jacob-Hirsch, Sigal Shaklai, Nurit Paz-Yaacov, Ninette Amariglio, Gideon Rechavi, Luba Trakhtenbrot

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

Background: Polyploidy has been recognized for many years as an important hallmark of cancer cells. Polyploid cells can arise through cell fusion, endoreplication and abortive cell cycle. The inner nuclear membrane protein LAP2β plays key roles in nuclear envelope breakdown and reassembly during mitosis, initiation of replication and transcriptional repression. Here we studied the function of LAP2β in the maintenance of cell ploidy state, a role which has not yet been assigned to this protein. Results: By knocking down the expression of LAP2β, using both viral and non-viral RNAi approaches in osteosarcoma derived U2OS cells, we detected enlarged nuclear size, nearly doubling of DNA content and chromosomal duplications, as analyzed by fluorescent in situ hybridization and spectral karyotyping methodologies. Spectral karyotyping analyses revealed that near-hexaploid karyotypes of LAP2β knocked down cells consisted of not only seven duplicated chromosomal markers, as could be anticipated by genome duplication mechanism, but also of four single chromosomal markers. Furthermore, spectral karyotyping analysis revealed that both of two near-triploid U2OS sub-clones contained the seven markers that were duplicated in LAP2β knocked down cells, whereas the four single chromosomal markers were detected only in one of them. Gene expression profiling of LAP2β knocked down cells revealed that up to a third of the genes exhibiting significant changes in their expression are involved in cancer progression. Conclusions: Our results suggest that nuclear fusion mechanism underlies the polyploidization induction upon LAP2β reduced expression. Our study implies on a novel role of LAP2β in the maintenance of cell ploidy status. LAP2β depleted U2OS cells can serve as a model to investigate polyploidy and aneuploidy formation by nuclear fusion mechanism and its involvement in cancerogenesis.

Original languageEnglish
Article number9
JournalMolecular Cytogenetics
Volume7
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 28 Jan 2014
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank Dr. Gilmor Keshet for her helpful input and advice regarding the cell fusion mechanism. G. Rechavi holds the Djerasi Chair for Oncology (Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel). This research was supported by the Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute (FAMRI). This research was performed in partial fulfillment of the requirements towards the M.Sc. degree of Shirley Oren Ben-Shoshan at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel.

Funding

We thank Dr. Gilmor Keshet for her helpful input and advice regarding the cell fusion mechanism. G. Rechavi holds the Djerasi Chair for Oncology (Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel). This research was supported by the Flight Attendants Medical Research Institute (FAMRI). This research was performed in partial fulfillment of the requirements towards the M.Sc. degree of Shirley Oren Ben-Shoshan at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel.

FundersFunder number
Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute

    Keywords

    • Cell fusion
    • LAP2
    • Nuclear envelope
    • Nuclear fusion
    • Osteosarcoma
    • Polyploidy
    • SKY
    • U2OS

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