deleted in liver cancer 2 (dlc2) was dispensable for development and its deficiency did not aggravate hepatocarcinogenesis删除在肝癌2(dlc2)是可有可无的发展及其缺陷没有加剧hepatocarcinogenesis.pdfVIP

Deleted in Liver Cancer 2 (DLC2) Was Dispensable for Development and Its Deficiency Did Not Aggravate Hepatocarcinogenesis 1 1¤ 1 1 1 Tai On Yau , Thomas Ho Yin Leung , Sandra Lam , Oi Fung Cheung , Edmund Kwok Kwan Tung , 2 3 3 1 Pek Lan Khong , Amy Lam , Sookja Chung , Irene Oi Lin Ng * 1 Liver Cancer and Hepatitis Research Laboratory and SH Ho Foundation Research Laboratories, Department of Pathology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China, 2 Department of Diagnostic Radiology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China, 3 Department of Anatomy, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China Abstract DLC2 (deleted in liver cancer 2), a Rho GTPase-activating protein, was previously shown to be underexpressed in human hepatocellular carcinoma and has tumor suppressor functions in cell culture models. We generated DLC2-deficient mice to investigate the tumor suppressor role of DLC2 in hepatocarcinogenesis and the function of DLC2 in vivo. In this study, we found that, unlike homologous DLC1, which is essential for embryonic development, DLC2 was dispensable for embryonic development and DLC2-deficient mice could survive to adulthood. We also did not observe a higher incidence of liver tumor formation or diethylnitrosamine (DEN)-induced hepatocarcinogenesis in DLC2-deficient mice. However, we observed that DLC2-deficient mice were smaller and had less adipose tissue than the wild type mice. These phenotypes were not due to reduction of cell size or defect in adipogenesis, as observed in the 190B RhoGAP-deficient mouse model. Together, these results suggest that deficiency in DLC2 alone does not enhance hepatocarcino