Nobuhisa Tetsuji, Naomoto Yoshio, Takaoka Munenori, Tabuchi Yoko, Ookawa Keizou, Kitamoto Dai, Gunduz Esra, Gunduz Mehmet, Nagatsuka Hitoshi, Haisa Minoru, Matsuoka Junji, Nakajima Motowo, Tanaka Noriaki
Department of Gastroenterological Surgery Transplant and Surgical Oncology, Graduate School of Medicine and Dentistry, Okayama University, Okayama 700-8558, Japan.
Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2005 May 27;331(1):175-80. doi: 10.1016/j.bbrc.2005.03.129.
The study of epithelial differentiation touches upon many modern aspects of biology. The epithelium is in constant dialogue with the underlying mesenchyme to control stem cell activity, proliferation in transit-amplifying compartments, lineage commitment, terminal differentiation and, ultimately, cell death. There are spatially distinct compartments dedicated to each of these events. Recently we reported that heparanase is expressed in nucleus as well as in the cytoplasm and that nuclear heparanase seems to be related to cell differentiation. In this study, we investigated the role of nuclear heparanase in differentiation by transducing human mammary epithelial cancer cells with heparanase which was delivered specifically into nucleus. We observed that expression of nuclear heparanase allowed the cells to differentiate with the appearance of lipid droplets. This finding supports the idea that heparanase plays a novel role in epithelial cell differentiation apart from its known enzymatic function.
上皮细胞分化的研究涉及生物学的许多现代领域。上皮细胞与下方的间充质不断进行对话，以控制干细胞活性、过渡增殖区的增殖、谱系定向、终末分化以及最终的细胞死亡。每个事件都有空间上不同的区域。最近我们报道，乙酰肝素酶在细胞核和细胞质中均有表达，并且核乙酰肝素酶似乎与细胞分化有关。在本研究中，我们通过将特异性导入细胞核的乙酰肝素酶转导至人乳腺上皮癌细胞中，研究了核乙酰肝素酶在分化中的作用。我们观察到，核乙酰肝素酶的表达使细胞出现脂滴并发生分化。这一发现支持了这样一种观点，即乙酰肝素酶除了其已知的酶功能外，在上皮细胞分化中还发挥着新的作用。
