Quantitative relationship of dioxin-responsive gene expression to dioxin response element in Hep3B and HepG2 human hepatocarcinoma cell lines.

Dioxin response element (DRE) is a cis-acting DNA sequence mediating the 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD)-induced gene expression. The present study was undertaken to elucidate TCDD-responsive gene expression profiles and their relationships to the number of DREs in liver cancer cells. Hep3B and HepG2 human hepatocarcinoma cells were exposed to 50-nM TCDD for 0, 1, 2 and 4h in culture, after which gene expression profiles were analyzed by the microarray hybridization using a chip containing 24,000 cDNAs prepared from the human liver. The TCDD-responsive expression levels in each gene were calculated by dividing the densitometric values of the hybridization signal for h1, h2 and h4 by that of h0, followed by transformation of the resulting data into a log scale with the base of 2. Up- and down-regulated gene expressions were defined as >0.585 and <-0.585 by the log scale (>1.5 and <1/1.5 arithmetically), respectively, exhibited at any time after h0. Hep3B and HepG2 cells had 27 and 58 TCDD-responsive, up-regulated genes, respectively, of which 78% (21/27) and 62% (36/58) had one or more DREs. Of these 85, 80 genes were up-regulated exclusively in one of the two lines, with CYP1A1 and PPP1R15A being so regulated in both lines. Expression levels of the up-regulated genes at h1, h2 and h4 were correlated with each other (P<0.01) and the mean of these regressed to the number of DRE(s) in both lines (P<0.01). However, expression of a total of 93 TCDD-responsive, down-regulated genes, of which 46% contained DRE(s), had no relation to the number of DRE(s). In conclusion, results suggest that DREs may cooperatively mediate the expression of TCDD-responsive genes in liver cancer cells.