Skip to main content

A novel polymorphic repeat in the upstream regulatory region of the estrogen-induced gene EIG121 is not associated with the risk of developing breast or endometrial cancer

Abstract

Background

The estrogen-induced gene 121 (EIG121) has been associated with breast and endometrial cancers, but its mechanism of action remains unknown. In a genome-wide search for tandem repeats, we found that EIG121 contains a short tandem repeat (STR) in its upstream regulatory region which has the potential to alter gene expression. The presence of this STR has not previously been analysed in relation to breast or endometrial cancer risk.

Results

In this study, the lengths of this STR were determined by PCR, fragment analysis and sequencing using DNA from 223 breast cancer patients, 204 endometrial cancer patients and 220 healthy controls to determine if they were associated with the risk of developing breast or endometrial cancer. We found this repeat to be highly variable with the number of copies of the AG motif ranging from 27 to 72 and having a bimodal distribution. No statistically significant association was identified between the length of this STR and the risk of developing breast or endometrial cancer or age at diagnosis.

Conclusions

The STR in the upstream regulatory region of EIG121 is highly polymorphic, but is not associated with the risk of developing breast or endometrial cancer in the cohorts analysed here. While this polymorphic STR in the regulatory region of EIG121 appears to have no impact on the risk of developing breast or endometrial cancer, its association with disease recurrence or overall survival remains to be determined.

Findings

The recent emphasis on high-throughput assays in the search to find genetic variants responsible for familial cancer risk has failed to account for a significant proportion of cases. Instead, the use of genome-wide association studies and next-generation sequencing has revealed variants that account for a small portion of heritability and has now resulted in the phrase “missing heritability” to explain that which remains unaccounted for [1, 2]. Another form of genetic variation that has been over-looked, largely due to their inability to be analysed on a large scale, is that of variable tandem repeats (TRs) which are common throughout the human genome and highly mutable [2]. TRs may be drivers of phenotypic variation as they are known to be the cause of several neurological disorders and are associated with complex diseases such as diabetes and cancer [3].

In a recent study we identified short tandem repeats (STRs) in the upstream regulatory region of genes that are candidates for conferring cancer risk [4]. One such STR is a dinucleotide AG repeat upstream of the estrogen-induced gene, EIG121 (also known as KIAA1324). In endometrial cancer cases, EIG121 is highly induced by estrogen in the endometrium and differentially expressed in endometrial cancer types [5, 6]. Studies suggest that EIG121, a transmembrane protein, has an important cellular function, as it is highly conserved across species and confers survival upon cells that have been starved of nutrients or exposed to cytotoxic chemotherapeutics [7]. Our analysis from publicly-available datasets, using the Oncomine™ Platform (http://www.oncomine.com), shows EIG121 to be over-expressed in breast cancer compared to other cancer types (Additional file 1: Table S1; [8]) and compared to normal breast tissue (Additional file 2: Table S2; [9, 10]).

Breast and endometrial cancers are estrogen-driven malignancies, and in both diseases, higher expression of estrogen-induced genes is associated with tumours that tend to be low-grade and less aggressive [5, 11] suggesting involvement of these genes in cancer risk and/or development. As EIG121 has already been associated with estrogen levels and cancer, we analysed the variability of this newly identified STR in a series of breast and endometrial cancer cases and in a healthy control population to determine if there was any association between its length and the risk of developing these estrogen-driven cancers.

This study included 223 breast cancer cases, 204 endometrial cancer cases and 220 healthy controls from whom blood-derived genomic DNA had been collected for previous studies in Newcastle, New South Wales (NSW), Australia [1214]. Study participant demographics are shown in Table 1. All participants provided written informed consent for the samples to be used for research.

Table 1 Demographic characteristics of the participants used in this study

The STR (a dinucleotide AG repeat) situated 518 bp upstream of the transcription start site for EIG121 was genotyped by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and fragment analysis using forward (5′-aggctaatccaggagaatctcttg-3′) and reverse (5′-aggctaatccaggagaatctcttg-3′) primers designed to amplify a 232 bp length fragment. PCR was performed with Platinum Taq DNA Polymerase High Fidelity (Invitrogen), an annealing temperature of 61 °C and 1.5 mM MgSO4. Fragment analysis was conducted on the ABI3730 DNA Analyzer (Applied Biosystems (AB)) after denaturation in the presence of HiDi Formamide (AB) and GeneScan 600 LIZ Size Standard (AB). The resulting electropherograms were analysed using Peak Scanner v1.0 software (AB). Sanger sequencing [12] on at least 10 % of each sample cohort, using the same primer sequences as described above, confirmed STR lengths. A line of best fit was generated to correct lengths obtained from fragment analysis as described by Pasqualotto and co-workers [15].

Statistical analyses were performed using the Stata 11.1 software package (StataCorp LP, College Station, TX, USA) and involved non-parametric Mann–Whitney U tests, Cox proportional hazard regression, Pearson’s Chi squared and Fisher’s exact tests. The significance levels of all tests were set at p value < 0.05 (two-sided) and corrected for multiple comparisons using the Bonferroni method.

Based on genotyping results, the AG repeat in the upstream regulatory region of EIG121 was highly variable, and showed a bimodal distribution of lengths with sizes ranging from 27 to 72 copies across all three cohorts (Fig. 1). The mean values for number of copies of the AG motif were 37.14, 38.34 and 37.55 for the breast cancer, endometrial cancer and healthy control cohorts respectively and the median was 35 for all three cohorts.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Histogram showing the bimodal distribution of EIG121 STR lengths across all three cohorts (breast cancer, endometrial cancer and healthy control samples)

A non-parametric Mann–Whitney U test was used to test for any association between STR lengths, using both allele lengths for each individual, and cancer types. This demonstrated a lack of association between STR length and breast and endometrial cancers when compared to healthy controls (Table 2). To test if there was any association between STR lengths and age at diagnosis of the cancers, Cox proportional hazard regression was performed. This showed no association between STR length and age at diagnosis for breast and endometrial cancers, including when BMI was taken into account for endometrial cancer (Table 2). BMI data was not available for the breast cancer cohort. When allelic (short (S) vs long (L)) and genotypic (SS, SL and LL) analyses were performed, using a threshold of 50 copies for calling short and long alleles, there were no statistically significant associations for either cancer type (Table 2). In the breast cancer cohort, resulting p values for the allelic and genotypic analyses (p = 0.185 and p = 0.102, respectively; Table 2) are inclined towards a weak association between STR length and breast cancer risk. Further analysis of larger sample sizes or breast cancer subtypes would be required to confirm any possible association.

Table 2 Hazard ratios (HR), 95 % confidence intervals (CI) and p values for breast and endometrial cancer analysis in relation to EIG121 STR lengths

In conclusion, the AG dinucleotide repeat in the upstream regulatory region of EIG121 is a highly polymorphic STR, making it a variable genetic element with the potential to influence the expression of EIG121 and subsequently impact disease risk and/or severity. No statistically significant association was identified between the length of this dinucleotide repeat and the age at diagnosis or risk of developing breast or endometrial cancer in the cohorts analysed. Hence, while this STR in the regulatory region of EIG121 is highly polymorphic, it is unlikely to be associated with the risk of developing breast or endometrial cancer. We cannot exclude its involvement in recurrence or overall survival as this information was not available for this study.

References

  1. Brookes KJ. The VNTR in complex disorders: the forgotten polymorphisms? A functional way forward? Genomics. 2013;101(5):273–81.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Hannan AJ. Tandem repeat polymorphisms: modulators of disease susceptibility and candidates for ‘missing heritability’. Trends Genet. 2010;26(2):59–65.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Press MO, Carlson KD, Queitsch C. The overdue promise of short tandem repeat variation for heritability. Trends Genet. 2014;30(11):504–12.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  4. Bolton KA, Ross JP, Grice DM, Bowden NA, Holliday EG, Avery-Kiejda KA, Scott RJ. STaRRRT: a table of short tandem repeats in regulatory regions of the human genome. BMC Genom. 2013;14(1):795.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Westin SN, Broaddus RR, Deng L, McCampbell A, Lu KH, Lacour RA, Milam MR, Urbauer DL, Mueller P, Pickar JH, et al. Molecular clustering of endometrial carcinoma based on estrogen-induced gene expression. Cancer Biol Ther. 2009;8(22):2126–35.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  6. Deng L, Broaddus RR, McCampbell A, Shipley GL, Loose DS, Stancel GM, Pickar JH, Davies PJ. Identification of a novel estrogen-regulated gene, EIG121, induced by hormone replacement therapy and differentially expressed in type I and type II endometrial cancer. Clin Cancer Res. 2005;11(23):8258–64.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Deng L, Feng J, Broaddus RR. The novel estrogen-induced gene EIG121 regulates autophagy and promotes cell survival under stress. Cell Death Dis. 2010;1(1):e32.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  8. Yu K, Ganesan K, Tan LK, Laban M, Wu J, Zhao XD, Li H, Leung CH, Zhu Y, Wei CL, et al. A precisely regulated gene expression cassette potently modulates metastasis and survival in multiple solid cancers. PLoS Genet. 2008;4(7):e1000129.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  9. Curtis C, Shah SP, Chin SF, Turashvili G, Rueda OM, Dunning MJ, Speed D, Lynch AG, Samarajiwa S, Yuan Y, et al. The genomic and transcriptomic architecture of 2,000 breast tumours reveals novel subgroups. Nature. 2012;486(7403):346–52.

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  10. Finak G, Bertos N, Pepin F, Sadekova S, Souleimanova M, Zhao H, Chen H, Omeroglu G, Meterissian S, Omeroglu A, et al. Stromal gene expression predicts clinical outcome in breast cancer. Nat Med. 2008;14(5):518–27.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  11. Oh DS, Troester MA, Usary J, Hu Z, He X, Fan C, Wu J, Carey LA, Perou CM. Estrogen-regulated genes predict survival in hormone receptor-positive breast cancers. J Clin Oncol. 2006;24(11):1656–64.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. Wong MW, Nordfors C, Mossman D, Pecenpetelovska G, Avery-Kiejda KA, Talseth-Palmer B, Bowden NA, Scott RJ. BRIP1, PALB2, and RAD51C mutation analysis reveals their relative importance as genetic susceptibility factors for breast cancer. Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2011;127(3):853–9.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  13. Ashton KA, Proietto A, Otton G, Symonds I, McEvoy M, Attia J, Gilbert M, Hamann U, Scott RJ. The influence of the Cyclin D1 870 G>A polymorphism as an endometrial cancer risk factor. BMC Cancer. 2008;8:272.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  14. McEvoy M, Smith W, D’Este C, Duke J, Peel R, Schofield P, Scott R, Byles J, Henry D, Ewald B, et al. Cohort profile: the hunter community study. Int J Epidemiol. 2010;39(6):1452–63.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  15. Pasqualotto AC, Denning DW, Anderson MJ. A cautionary tale: lack of consistency in allele sizes between two laboratories for a published multilocus microsatellite typing system. J Clin Microbiol. 2007;45(2):522–8.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors’ contributions

KAB provided the concept, designed the study, performed the experiments and analysis, and wrote the manuscript. EGH and JA assisted with statistical analysis and manuscript development. KAAK and NAB assisted with the study design, interpretation of results and manuscript development. RJS assisted with the concept and study design, interpretation of results and manuscript development. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award (K.A. Bolton) and a National Health and Medical Research Centre Training (post-doctoral) Fellowship and Cancer Institute NSW Career Development Fellowship (N.A. Bowden). We wish to thank the breast cancer patients (Hunter Area Pathology Service, HAPS), endometrial cancer patients (John Hunter Hospital, JHH) and healthy controls (Hunter Community Study, HCS) who kindly consented to the use of their DNA for research. We wish to thank Dr. Michelle Wong-Brown for helping to source the breast cancer samples from HAPS; Dr. Katie Ashton, Dr. Anthony Proietto and Dr. Geoffrey Otton for sourcing and collecting the endometrial cancer samples from JHH; and Mr. Mark McEvoy and Mr. Stephen Hancock for sourcing samples and clinical data for the HCS cohort.

Availability of supporting data

Oncomine™ Platform datasets are available at http://www.oncomine.com. Oncomine™ gene expression analysis results are available as Additional file 1: Table S1 and Additional file 2: Table S2.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethics statement

Ethics approval was obtained from the Human Research Ethics Committee, University of Newcastle (H-2009-0265; H-050-065) and the Hunter New England Human Research Ethics Committee, Hunter New England Health Service (09/05/20/5.01; 05/03/09/3.14), Newcastle, NSW, Australia.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rodney J. Scott.

Additional files

13104_2016_2086_MOESM1_ESM.docx

Additional file 1: Table S1. Statistics from analysis of the expression of EIG121 (KIAA1324) from Oncomine™ Platform comparisons in multi-cancer datasets (http://www.oncomine.com). The values shown refer to over-expression of EIG121 in breast cancer cases relative to other cancer types. The total number of samples, n, in each dataset are shown.

13104_2016_2086_MOESM2_ESM.docx

Additional file 2: Table S2. Statistics from analysis of the expression of EIG121 (KIAA1324) from Oncomine™ Platform comparisons of breast cancer versus normal breast samples (http://www.oncomine.com). The values shown refer to over-expression of EIG121 in breast cancer cases compared to normal breast. The number (n) of breast cancer cases and normal breast samples are shown for each dataset.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bolton, K.A., Holliday, E.G., Attia, J. et al. A novel polymorphic repeat in the upstream regulatory region of the estrogen-induced gene EIG121 is not associated with the risk of developing breast or endometrial cancer. BMC Res Notes 9, 287 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-016-2086-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-016-2086-3

Keywords