Holcakova Jitka, Muller Petr, Tomasec Peter, Hrstka Roman, Nekulova Marta, Krystof Vladimir, Strnad Miroslav, Wilkinson Gavin W G, Vojtesek Borivoj
Regional Centre for Applied Molecular Oncology, Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute, Brno, Czech Republic.
School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2014 Feb 21;9(2):e89228. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0089228. eCollection 2014.
Cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) are key regulators of the cell cycle and RNA polymerase II mediated transcription. Several pharmacological CDK inhibitors are currently in clinical trials as potential cancer therapeutics and some of them also exhibit antiviral effects. Olomoucine II and roscovitine, purine-based inhibitors of CDKs, were described as effective antiviral agents that inhibit replication of a broad range of wild type human viruses. Olomoucine II and roscovitine show high selectivity for CDK7 and CDK9, with important functions in the regulation of RNA polymerase II transcription. RNA polymerase II is necessary for viral transcription and following replication in cells. We analyzed the effect of inhibition of CDKs by olomoucine II on gene expression from viral promoters and compared its effect to widely-used roscovitine. We found that both roscovitine and olomoucine II blocked the phosphorylation of RNA polymerase II C-terminal domain. However the repression of genes regulated by viral promoters was strongly dependent on gene localization. Both roscovitine and olomoucine II inhibited expression only when the viral promoter was not integrated into chromosomal DNA. In contrast, treatment of cells with genome-integrated viral promoters increased their expression even though there was decreased phosphorylation of the C-terminal domain of RNA polymerase II. To define the mechanism responsible for decreased gene expression after pharmacological CDK inhibitor treatment, the level of mRNA transcription from extrachromosomal DNA was determined. Interestingly, our results showed that inhibition of RNA polymerase II C-terminal domain phosphorylation increased the number of transcribed mRNAs. However, some of these mRNAs were truncated and lacked polyadenylation, which resulted in decreased translation. These results suggest that phosphorylation of RNA polymerase II C-terminal domain is critical for linking transcription and posttrancriptional processing of mRNA expressed from extrachromosomal DNA.
细胞周期蛋白依赖性激酶(CDK)是细胞周期和RNA聚合酶II介导的转录的关键调节因子。目前,几种CDK药理学抑制剂正处于临床试验阶段,作为潜在的癌症治疗药物,其中一些还具有抗病毒作用。奥洛莫辛II和罗斯考维汀是基于嘌呤的CDK抑制剂,被描述为有效的抗病毒药物,可抑制多种野生型人类病毒的复制。奥洛莫辛II和罗斯考维汀对CDK7和CDK9具有高度选择性,它们在RNA聚合酶II转录的调节中具有重要作用。RNA聚合酶II是病毒转录以及随后在细胞中复制所必需的。我们分析了奥洛莫辛II抑制CDK对病毒启动子基因表达的影响,并将其与广泛使用的罗斯考维汀的作用进行了比较。我们发现,罗斯考维汀和奥洛莫辛II均阻断了RNA聚合酶II C末端结构域的磷酸化。然而,病毒启动子调控的基因的抑制强烈依赖于基因定位。仅当病毒启动子未整合到染色体DNA中时,罗斯考维汀和奥洛莫辛II才抑制表达。相反,用基因组整合的病毒启动子处理细胞会增加其表达,尽管RNA聚合酶II C末端结构域的磷酸化减少。为了确定药理学CDK抑制剂处理后基因表达降低的机制,我们测定了染色体外DNA的mRNA转录水平。有趣的是,我们的结果表明,抑制RNA聚合酶II C末端结构域的磷酸化会增加转录的mRNA数量。然而,其中一些mRNA被截断且缺乏多聚腺苷酸化,这导致翻译减少。这些结果表明,RNA聚合酶II C末端结构域的磷酸化对于连接染色体外DNA表达的mRNA的转录和转录后加工至关重要。