The Pattern of RNA Editing Changes in Pleural Mesothelioma upon Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition

Abstract

Pleural mesothelioma (PM) is a cancer where epithelioid, biphasic and sarcomatoid histotypes are observed. Sarcomatoid PM is characterized by mesenchymal features. Multi-omics have been used to characterize the epithelial-to-mesenchymal (EMT) phenotype at the molecular level. We contribute to this effort by including the analysis of RNA editing. We extracted samples with the highest vs. lowest Epithelial score from two PM cohorts and observed increased RNA editing in introns and decreased RNA editing in 3'UTR upon EMT. The same was observed in primary PM primary cultures stratified by transcriptomics analysis into two groups, one of them enriched with mesenchymal features. Our data demonstrate that, as has been observed in other cancer types, RNA editing associates to EMT phenotype in PM.

Keywords: RNA editing; epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition; pleural mesothelioma.

Figure 1

RNA editing of different genomic regions varies with epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition in pleural mesothelioma. (a) Norm E-score distribution in the TCGA and Bueno datasets; (b) Transcriptome with highest vs. lowest E-score (n = 13 for TCGA dataset, n = 25 for Bueno dataset) are characterized by differences in the genomic regions where RNA is edited. Chi-square test.

Figure 2

C1 (n = 21) and C2 (n = 43) primary pleural mesothelioma culture subgroups are characterized by differences in the genomic regions where RNA is edited. Chi-square test.