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Background: Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is the most common rheumatic condition that is slowly progressive and predominantly affects adolescents. Pathological bone formation associated with AS is an important cause of disability. The aim of the study was to investigate the possible involvement of the genes related to endochondral ossification and ectopia ossification in genetic susceptibility to AS in a Chinese Han population., Methods: Sixty-eight single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from 13 genes were genotyped in discovery cohorts including 300 AS patients and 180 healthy controls. The rs10019009 in dentin matrix protein 1 (DMP1) gene shown as association with AS after multiple testing corrections in discovery cohorts was replicated in a validation independent cohort of 620 AS patients and 683 healthy controls. The rs10019009 was assessed with bioinformatics including phylogenetic context, F-SNP and FastSNP functional predictions, secondary structure prediction, and molecular modeling. We performed a functional analysis of rs10019009 via reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity in human osteosarcoma U 2 OS cells., Results: Interestingly, the SNP rs10019009 was associated with AS in both the discovery cohort (P = 0.0012) and validation cohort (P = 0.0349), as well as overall (P = 0.0004) in genetic case-control association analysis. After a multivariate logistic regression analysis, the effect of this genetic variant was observed to be independent of linkage disequilibrium. Via bioinformatics analysis, it was found that the amino acid change of the rs10019009 led to changes of SNP function, secondary structure, tertiary conformation, and splice mode. Finally, functional analysis of rs10019009 in U 2 OS cells demonstrated that the risk T allele of the rs10019009 increased enzymatic activity of ALP, compared to that of the nonrisk allele (P = 0.0080)., Conclusions: These results suggested that the DMP1 gene seems to be involved in genetic predisposition to AS, which may contribute to the ectopic mineralization or ossification in AS. In addition, DMP1 gene may be a promising intervention target for AS in the future.

Background: The treatment of patients with small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is based on chemotherapy. However, the treatment is limited by the development of drug resistance. Emodin has been shown to exhibit an anti-cancer effect. But the molecular mechanism remains unclear. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of emodin on the gene expression profile changes in SCLC NCI-H446 cells., Methods: NCI-H446 cells were treated with emodin and cell viability was determined by MTT assay. Cell apoptosis was determined by both flow cytometry and caspase-3 activity assay. The effect of emodin on the gene expression profile of NCI-H446 cells was analyzed using cDNA microarray. Semi-quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to validate the microarray results., Results: Emodin suppressed viability, induced apoptosis and changed cell cycle of NCI-H446 cells. Among the 1262 genes, 10 genes were up-regulated and 8 genes were down-regulated more than 2 folds in NCI-H446 cells when compared with the control cells after treatment with emodin for 12 hours, while 12 genes were up-regulated and 24 genes were down-regulated after treatment with emodin for 24 hours. These genes were involved in metabolism, signal transduction, transcription regulation, cytoskeleton organization, immune response, transport, protein synthesis, cell cycle control, cell adhesion and RNA processing. The RT-PCR results were consistent with those obtained by the microarray., Conclusions: Emodin affects the expression of genes involved in various cellular functions and plays important roles in cell apoptosis, tumor metastasis and chemotherapy-resistance, which suggests emodin might become an effective chemopreventive or chemotherapeutic agent for SCLC.