Department of Human Genetics, School of Medicine, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville, TX, United States.
South Texas Diabetes and Obesity Institute, School of Medicine, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville, TX, United States.
Front Immunol. 2021 Feb 24;12:630988. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.630988. eCollection 2021.
Sea turtle fibropapillomatosis (FP) is a tumor promoting disease that is one of several threats globally to endangered sea turtle populations. The prevalence of FP is highest in green sea turtle () populations, and historically has shown considerable temporal growth. FP tumors can significantly affect the ability of turtles to forage for food and avoid predation and can grow to debilitating sizes. In the current study, based in South Texas, we have applied transcriptome sequencing to FP tumors and healthy control tissue to study the gene expression profiles of FP. By identifying differentially expressed turtle genes in FP, and matching these genes to their closest human ortholog we draw on the wealth of human based knowledge, specifically human cancer, to identify new insights into the biology of sea turtle FP. We show that several genes aberrantly expressed in FP tumors have known tumor promoting biology in humans, including and , and provide support that disruption of the Wnt signaling pathway is a feature of FP. Further, we profiled the expression of current targets of immune checkpoint inhibitors from human oncology in FP tumors and identified potential candidates for future studies.
海龟纤维性乳头状瘤病（FP）是一种促进肿瘤生长的疾病，是对濒危海龟种群的全球威胁之一。FP 在绿海龟（）种群中的流行率最高，并且历史上已经显示出相当大的时间增长。FP 肿瘤会严重影响海龟觅食和躲避捕食的能力，并且可以长到使人衰弱的大小。在本研究中，我们在德克萨斯州南部应用转录组测序技术对 FP 肿瘤和健康对照组织进行了研究，以研究 FP 的基因表达谱。通过鉴定 FP 中差异表达的海龟基因，并将这些基因与其最接近的人类直系同源物进行匹配，我们借鉴了丰富的人类知识，特别是人类癌症，以确定对海龟 FP 生物学的新见解。我们表明，FP 肿瘤中异常表达的几个基因在人类中具有已知的促进肿瘤生长的生物学特性，包括 和 ，并提供支持，即 Wnt 信号通路的中断是 FP 的一个特征。此外，我们对 FP 肿瘤中来自人类肿瘤学的当前免疫检查点抑制剂的靶基因进行了表达谱分析，并确定了未来研究的潜在候选基因。
