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

Our plain-English summary of The Pattern of RNA Editing Changes in Pleural Mesothelioma upon Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition, by E. Felley-Bosco, W. Qi, D. Jean, et al (International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2023).

The study

• Authors: E. Felley-Bosco, W. Qi, D. Jean, C. Meiller, H. Rehrauer
• Journal: International Journal of Molecular Sciences
• Published: 2023;24(3)
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher · Free full text

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.

In plain English

This short laboratory study looked at RNA editing in pleural mesothelioma. RNA editing is a chemical change made to a cell's RNA after the RNA is copied from DNA. The study did not examine asbestos or any other exposure. The authors reanalysed existing RNA sequencing data from two published tumor groups, the TCGA cohort (87 samples) and the Bueno cohort (223 samples), and from 64 primary pleural mesothelioma cell cultures. In each tumor cohort they compared the samples with the highest and lowest scores on a gene-activity measure of epithelioid character. The figure gives n = 13 for TCGA and n = 25 for Bueno. Compared with the lowest-scoring samples, the highest-scoring samples had more editing in the 3′UTR (the tail end of the RNA) and just downstream of genes, and less editing in introns. The culture subgroups showed the same trend: C1 (21 cultures) against C2 (43 cultures, the subgroup with mesenchymal features). The authors concluded that RNA editing is associated with the epithelial-to-mesenchymal phenotype in pleural mesothelioma, as reported in other cancers, and that it deserves further study.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Laboratory (bioinformatic) analysis of existing RNA sequencing data from two tumor cohorts and from primary tumor cell cultures, published as a short 'Communication'
• Who was studied: Pleural mesothelioma tumor samples from the TCGA cohort (n = 87) and the Bueno cohort (n = 223). Within these, the samples with the highest and lowest epithelioid score were compared (n = 13 for TCGA, n = 25 for Bueno, as printed in the figure legend). Also 64 pleural mesothelioma primary cultures, split into subgroups C1 (n = 21) and C2 (n = 43).
• Exposure: No asbestos or other exposure was studied. The comparison was between tumors or cultures with more epithelioid versus more mesenchymal (sarcomatoid-like) molecular features.
• Main results:
  • In both tumor cohorts, RNA editing patterns differed significantly between the highest and lowest epithelioid-score groups (chi-square test). The text does not print a p-value.
  • The highest epithelioid-score group had more editing in the 3′UTR and in the region 5 kb downstream of genes, and less editing in introns, than the lowest-score group.
  • In the primary cultures, the mesenchymal C2 subgroup showed the same significant trend compared with C1: less editing in the 3′UTR and downstream regions, and more editing in introns.
  • Expression of the editing enzyme ADAR2 was higher in low epithelioid-score samples in the TCGA dataset. The difference was not significant in the Bueno dataset.
  • ADAR2 expression was higher in the C2 primary cultures.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that RNA editing is associated with the epithelial-to-mesenchymal phenotype in pleural mesothelioma. They said that RNA editing and RNA splicing deserve further investigation to determine their contribution to the disease phenotype.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Lung cancer, Mesothelioma.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Pleural Mesothelioma, Epithelioid, Biphasic Mesothelioma, Sarcomatoid.

Related studies

• Epithelial-mesenchymal transition in malignant mesothelioma — A. Fassina, R. Cappellesso, et al. (2012)
• Prognostic significance of epithelial-mesenchymal transition in malignant pleural mesothelioma — A. Schramm, I. Opitz, et al. (2010)
• The Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) in the Development and Metastasis of Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma — V. Ramundo, G. Zanirato, et al. (2021)
• Clinical significance of epithelial-mesenchymal transition-associated markers in malignant pleural mesothelioma — T. Iwanami, H. Uramoto, et al. (2014)
• Epithelioid peritoneal mesothelioma: a hybrid phenotype within a mesenchymal-epithelial/epithelial-mesenchymal transition framework — F. Bozzi, S. Brich, et al. (2016)
• The Role of Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition in Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma: From Pathogenesis to Diagnosis and Treatment — D.E. Magouliotis, F. Minervini, et al. (2025)

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