Browsing by Author "Ekmekcioglu, Aysegul"

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Investigation of base excision repair gene variants in late-onset Alzheimer's disease
(PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE, 2019-01-01) Ertuzun, Tugce; Semerci, Asli; Cakir, Mehmet Emin; Ekmekcioglu, Aysegul; Gok, Mehmet Oguz; Soltys, Daniela T.; de Souza-Pinto, Nadja C.; Sezerman, Ugur; Muftuoglu, Meltem
Base excision repair (BER) defects and concomitant oxidative DNA damage accumulation play a role in the etiology and progression of late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD). However, it is not known whether genetic variant(s) of specific BER genes contribute to reduced BER activity in LOAD patients and whether they are associated with risk, development and/or progression of LOAD. Therefore, we performed targeted next generation sequencing for three BER genes, uracil glycosylase (UNG), endonuclease VIII-like DNA glycosylase 1 (NEIL1) and polymerase beta (POL beta) including promoter, exonic and intronic regions in peripheral blood samples and postmortem brain tissues (temporal cortex, TC and cerebellum, CE) from LOAD patients, high-pathology control and cognitively normal age-matched controls. In addition, the known LOAD risk factor, APOE was included in this study to test whether any BER gene variants associate with APOE variants, particularly APOE epsilon 4. We show that UNG carry five significant variants (rs1610925, rs2268406, rs80001089, rs1018782 and rs1018783) in blood samples of Turkish LOAD patients compared to age-matched controls and one of them (UNG rs80001089) is also significant in TC from Brazilian LOAD patients (p<0.05). The significant variants present only in CE and TC from LOAD are UNG rs2569987 and POL beta rs1012381950, respectively. There is also significant epistatic relationship (p = 0.0410) between UNG rs80001089 and NEIL1 rs7182283 in TC from LOAD subjects. Our results suggest that significant BER gene variants may be associated with the risk of LOAD in non-APOE epsilon 4 carriers. On the other hand, there are no significant UNG, NEIL1 and POL beta variants that could affect their protein level and function, suggesting that there may be other factors such as post-transcriptional or-translational modifications responsible for the reduced activities and protein levels of these genes in LOAD pathogenesis. Further studies with increased sample size are needed to confirm the relationship between BER variants and LOAD risk.
Non-muscle invasive bladder cancer tissues have increased base excision repair capacity
(NATURE PORTFOLIO, 2020-01-01) Somuncu, Berna; Keskin, Selcuk; Antmen, Fatma Merve; Saglican, Yesim; Ekmekcioglu, Aysegul; Ertuzun, Tugce; Tuna, Mustafa Bilal; Obek, Can; Wilson, David M.; Ince, Umit; Kural, Ali Riza; Muftuoglu, Meltem
The molecular mechanisms underlying the development and progression of bladder cancer (BC) are complex and have not been fully elucidated. Alterations in base excision repair (BER) capacity, one of several DNA repair mechanisms assigned to preserving genome integrity, have been reported to influence cancer susceptibility, recurrence, and progression, as well as responses to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. We report herein that non-muscle invasive BC (NMIBC) tissues exhibit increased uracil incision, abasic endonuclease and gap-filling activities, as well as total BER capacity in comparison to normal bladder tissue from the same patient (p<0.05). No significant difference was detected in 8-oxoG incision activity between cancer and normal tissues. NMIBC tissues have elevated protein levels of uracil DNA glycosylase, 8-oxoguanine DNA glycosylase, AP endonuclease 1 and DNA polymerase beta protein. Moreover, the fold increase in total BER and the individual BER enzyme activities were greater in high-grade tissues than in low-grade NMIBC tissues. These findings suggest that enhanced BER activity may play a role in the etiology of NMIBC and that BER proteins could serve as biomarkers in disease prognosis, progression or response to genotoxic therapeutics, such as Bacillus Calmette-Guerin.
Targeting mitochondrial DNA polymerase gamma for selective inhibition of MLH1 deficient colon cancer growth
(PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE, 2022-01-01) Somuncu, Berna; Ekmekcioglu, Aysegul; Antmen, Fatma Merve; Ertuzun, Tugce; Deniz, Emre; Keskin, Nazli; Park, Joon; Yazici, Ilgu Ece; Simsek, Busra; Erman, Batu; Yin, Whitney; Erman, Burak; Muftuoglu, Meltem
Synthetic lethality in DNA repair pathways is an important strategy for the selective treatment of cancer cells without harming healthy cells and developing cancer-specific drugs. The synthetic lethal interaction between the mismatch repair (MMR) protein, MutL homolog 1 (MLH1), and the mitochondrial base excision repair protein, DNA polymerasey (Poly) was used in this study for the selective treatment of MLH1 deficient cancers. Germline mutations in the MLH1 gene and aberrant MLH1 promoter methylation result in an increased risk of developing many cancers, including nonpolyposis colorectal and endometrial cancers. Because the inhibition of Poly in MLH1 deficient cancer cells provides the synthetic lethal selectivity, we conducted a comprehensive small molecule screening from various databases and chemical drug library molecules for novel Poly inhibitors that selectively kill MLH1 deficient cancer cells. We characterized these Poly inhibitor molecules in vitro and in vivo, and identified 3,3'-{[}(1,1'-Bipheny1)4',4'-diyl)bis(azo)]bis{[}4-amino-1-naphthalenesu lfonic acid] (congo red