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Technological and methodological advances in multi-omics data generation and integration approaches help elucidate genetic features of complex biological traits and diseases such as prostate cancer. Due to its heterogeneity, the identification of key functional components involved in the regulation and progression of prostate cancer is a methodological challenge. In this study, we identified key regulatory interactions responsible for primary to metastasis transitions in prostate cancer using network inference approaches by integrating patient derived transcriptomic and miRomics data into gene/miRNA/transcription factor regulatory networks. One such network was derived for each of the clinical states of prostate cancer based on differentially expressed and significantly correlated gene, miRNA and TF pairs from the patient data. We identified key elements of each network using a network analysis approach and validated our results using patient survival analysis. We observed that HOXD10, BCL2 and PGR are the most important factors affected in primary prostate samples, whereas, in the metastatic state, STAT3, JUN and JUNB are playing a central role. Benefiting integrative networks our analysis suggests that some of these molecules were targeted by several overexpressed miRNAs which may have a major effect on the dysregulation of these molecules. For example, in the metastatic tumors five miRNAs (miR-671-5p, miR-665, miR-663, miR-512-3p and miR-371-5p) are mainly responsible for the dysregulation of STAT3 and hence can provide an opportunity for early detection of metastasis and development of alternative therapeutic approaches. Our findings deliver new details on key functional components in prostate cancer progression and provide opportunities for the development of alternative therapeutic approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we report a detailed experimental, binding free energy calculation and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation investigation of the interactions of carboxylic-functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (COOH-f-MWCNTs) with porcine trypsin (pTry). The enzyme exhibits decreased thermostability at 330K in the presence of COOH-f-MWCNTs. Furthermore, the activity of pTry also decreases in the presence of COOH-f-MWCNTs. The restricted diffusion of the substrate to the active site of the enzyme was observed in the experiment. The MD simulation analysis suggested that this could be because of the blocking of the S1 pocket of pTry, which plays a vital role in the substrate selectivity. The intrinsic fluorescence of pTry is quenched with increase in the COOH-f-MWCNTs concentration. Circular dichroism (CD) and UV–visible absorption spectroscopies indicate the ability of COOH-f-MWCNTs to experience conformational change in the native structure of the enzyme. The binding free energy calculations also show that electrostatics, π-cation, and π-π stacking interactions play important roles in the binding of the carboxylated CNTs with pTry. The MD simulation results demonstrated that the carboxylated CNTs adsorb to the enzyme stronger than the CNT without the–COOH groups. Our observations can provide an example of the nanoscale toxicity of COOH-f-MWCNTs for proteins, which is a critical issue for in vivo application of COOH-f-MWCNTs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]