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Studies have shown that Resveratrol (RE) can inhibit cancer initiation, promotion, and progression. However the gene expression profile in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) in response to RE treatment has never been reported. To understand the potential anticancer effect of RE on RCC at molecular level, we profiled and analyzed the expression of 2059 cancer-related genes in a RCC cell line RCC54 treated with RE. Biological functions of 633 genes were annotated based on biological process ontology and clustered into functional categories. Twenty-nine highly differentially expressed genes in RE treated RCC54 were identified and the potential implications of some gene expression alterations in RCC carcinogenesis were identified. RE was also shown to inhibit cell growth and induce cell death of RCC cells. The expression alterations of selected genes were validated using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. In addition, the gene expression profiles under different RE treatments were analyzed and visualized using singular value decomposition. The findings from this study support the hypothesis that RE induces differential expression of genes that are directly or indirectly related to the inhibition of RCC cell growth and induction of RCC cell death. In addition, it is apparent that the gene expression alterations due to RE treatment depend strongly on RE concentration. This study provides a general understanding of the overall genetic response of RCC54 to RE treatment and yields insights into the understanding of the cancer preventive mechanism of RE in RCC.

Adenylate/uridylate-rich element (ARE)-mediated mRNA turnover is an important regulatory component of gene expression for innate and specific immunity, in the hematopoietic system, in cellular growth regulation, and for many other cellular processes. This diversity is reflected in the distribution of AREs in the human genome, which we have established as a database of more than 900 ARE-containing genes that may utilize AREs as a means of controlling cellular mRNA levels. The p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAP kinase) pathway has been implicated in regulating the stability of nine ARE-containing transcripts. Here we explored the entire spectrum of ARE-containing genes for p38-dependent regulation of ARE-mediated mRNA turnover with a custom cDNA array containing probes for 950 ARE mRNAs. The human monocytic cell line THP-1 treated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) was used as a reproducible cellular model system that allowed us to precisely control the conditions of mRNA induction and decay in the absence and presence of the p38 inhibitor SB203580. This approach allowed us to establish an LPS-induced ARE mRNA expression profile in human monocytes and determine the half-lives of 470 AU-rich mRNAs. Most importantly, we identified 42 AU-rich genes, previously unrecognized, that show p38-dependent mRNA stabilization. In addition to a number of cytokines, several interesting novel AU-rich transcripts likely to play a role in macrophage activation by LPS exhibited p38-dependent transcript stabilization, including macrophage-specific colony-stimulating factor 1, carbonic anhydrase 2, Bcl2, Bcl2-like 2, and nuclear factor erythroid 2-like 2. Finally, the identification of the p38-dependent upstream activator MAP kinase kinase 6 as a member of this group identifies a positive feedback loop regulating macrophage signaling via p38 MAP kinase-dependent transcript stabilization.