The Puf-A Protein Is Required for Primordial Germ Cell Development

Cells

Yi-Chieh Chang¹  John Yu¹  Huan-Chieh Cho¹  Chi-Fong Ko¹ 

[1] Institute of Stem Cell and Translational Cancer Research, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taoyuan 333, Taiwan;

关键词: Puf-A;    nucleophosmin (NPM1);    p53;    primordial germ cells (PGCs);    proliferation;    apoptosis;   

DOI  :  10.3390/cells11091476

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Puf-A, a nucleolar Puf domain protein, is required for ribosome biogenesis. A study of Puf-A in zebrafish has shown that Puf-A is highly expressed in primordial germ cells (PGCs) and participates in PGC development. However, it remains unclear how Puf-A governs PGC development in mammals. Here, we generated transgenic mice carrying inducible Puf-A shRNA and obtained double heterozygous mice with Puf-A shRNA and Oct4-EGFP to examine the behavior of PGCs. It was found that the knockdown of Puf-A led to the loss of a considerable number of PGCs and a slowdown of the movement of the remaining PGCs. Puf-A and NPM1 colocalized in clusters in the nuclei of the PGCs. The silencing of Puf-A resulted in the translocation of NPM1 from nucleolus to nucleoplasm and the hyperactivation of p53 in the PGCs. The PGCs in Puf-A knockdown embryos showed a significant increase in subpopulations of PGCs at G1 arrest and apoptosis. Moreover, the expression of essential genes associated with PGC maintenance was decreased in the Puf-A knockdown PGCs. Our study showed that Puf-A governed PGC development by regulating the growth, survival, and maintenance of PGCs. We also observed the alterations of NPM1 and p53 upon Puf-A knockdown to be consistent with the previous study in cancer cells, which might explain the molecular mechanism for the role of Puf-A in PGC development.

【 授权许可】

Unknown