Down-regulation of Mesoderm Specific Transcript gene is associated with Breast carcinoma tumorigenesis

Introduction & aims: Mesoderm Specific Transcript (MEST) belongs to the alpha/beta hydrolase superfamily which is normally imprinted, with paternal allelic expression in fetal tissues. MEST plays a crucial role in development and its expression in early embryonic development is restricted to mesodermal tissues. It is located on chromosome 7q31–34 and the loss of imprinting of this gene has been associated with different types of cancer. Here in this study we aimed to investigate the expression level of MEST gene in breast tumor tissue and matched marginal non-tumor tissue of 35 individuals. Methods: the tissues were used for total RNA extraction using TRIzol reagent. The RNA samples were then used for cDNA synthesis following DNase I treatment. MEST gene expression was measured with qRT-PCR SYBR green method. The normalized gene expression level (to GAPDH gene as housekeeping) of the normal and tumor tissues was used for comparison. Data were analyzed using SPSS v17 software. Results: our finding showed that MEST gene expression is decreased in breast tumor tissue (mean fold change=0.5, p value=0.012) when comparing to the normal marginal tissue. The magnitude of MEST gene down-regulation was near to zero for some of the cases, suggesting its association with breast tumor progression. Conclusion: altogether our results indicated that MEST gene may play a function in breast cancer tumorigenesis and progression and it can be considered as a potential molecular candidate for future experiments.

کلیدواژه ها:

Breast tumor ، MEST gene expression ، qRT-PCR ، down- regulation