[The role of interleukin-1 beta in the regulation of liver-specific gene expression in human hepatoblastoma cells].

The authors studied the function of liver cells--on level of DNA and gene regulation--by methods of molecular biology. They found that treating human hepatoma (Hep G2) cells with interleukin-1 (IL-1) leads to the induction of alpha-1-acidglycoprotein (AGP) and complement 3 (C3) mRNA synthesis, and to a concomitant downregulation of albumin (alb), alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and alpha-2-macroglobulin (alpha 2M) mRNA synthesis. Levels of specific mRNA were measured by Northern-blot analysis. They conclude that Hep G2 cells may serve as a suitable in vitro model for study of the liver specific gene expression, and IL-1 is one of the mediators of these gene control. The regulation is pretranslational as the direction of change in specific mRNA corresponds to the changes in synthesis of the respective proteins.