Caffeine,which specifically inhibits ATM/ATR kinases,efficiently abrogates the ionizing radiation(IR)-induced G2 arrest and increases the sensitivity of various tumor cells to IR.Mechanisms for the effect of caffeine remain to be elucidated.As a target of ATM/ATR kinases,BRCA1 becomes activated and phosphorylated in response to IR.Thus,in this work,we investigated the possible role of BRCA1 in the effect of caffeine on G2 checkpoint and observed how BRCA1 phosphorylation was regulated in this process.For these purposes,the BRCA1 protein level and the phosphorylation states were analyzed by Western blotting by using an antibody against BRCA1 and phospho-specific antibodies against Ser-1423 and Ser-1524 residues in cells exposed to a combination of IR and caffeine.The results showed that caffeine down-regulated IR-induced BRCA1 expression and specifically abolished BRCA1 phosphorylation of Ser-1524,which was followed by an override of G2 arrest by caffeine.In addition,the ability of BRCA1 to transactivate p21 may be required for MCF-7 but not necessary for Hela response to caffeine.These data suggest that BRCA1 may be a potential target of caffeine.BRCA1 and its phosphorylation are most likely to be involved in the caffeine-inhibitable event upstream of G2 arrest.
BRCA1 has been proposed to be tightly linked to the resistance of tumor cells to ionizing radiation. The pathway leading to this phenomenon is not yet clear. In this work, we investigated the role of BRCA1 in the apoptosis regulation in response to carbon ion irradiation. We utilized three different cancer cell lines with various states for BRCA1 and p53 to identify the rela- tionship between endogenous BRCA1 and the apoptosis-related genes, and determine whether p53 function would affect the role of BRCA1 in apoptosis regulation. By Western blot analysis, we found that Bax expressions were not significantly changed after irradiation in all of three cell lines. However, Bcl-2 expression showed an up-regulation by endogenous BRCA1 regardless of p53 status. Moreover, the changes in Bcl-2 protein were due to the increase in the transcriptional levels of Bcl-2 mRNA, based on real-time PCR assay. At the same time, BRCAl-deficient cells showed a greater apoptosis susceptibility to irradiation when compared with BRCAl-proficient cells. The results suggest that BRCA1 might exert p53-independent regulative activities for Bcl-2, which seems account for the low apoptosis susceptibility in BRCAl-proficient carcinomas.
WANG YanLingWANG BingZHANG HongLI NingTANAKA KaoruZHOU XinCHEN RuPingZHANG Xin
