Identification of a novel FAS/ER-α fusion transcript expressed in human cancer cells

Abstract

A semi-nested reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was applied to evaluate the presence of estrogen receptor-α (ER-α) in human prostate cancer cells. Unexpectedly, a novel fatty acid synthase (FAS)/ER-α fusion transcript was identified, in which the N-terminus of FAS was fused in-frame with the C-terminus of ER-α. The existence of the FAS/ER-α transcript was further confirmed by RT-PCR analysis using various sets of amplification primers and different reverse-transcribed primers in the presence of dimethyl sulfoxide to eliminate the secondary structure of RNA. The predicted FAS/ER-α protein would contain largely domain I of FAS and the entire ligand binding domain of ER-α. The FAS/ER-α was expressed in a variety of human cancer cell lines including prostate, breast, cervical and bladder cancer cell lines. Our data suggest that the presence of FAS/ER-α may complicate the FAS and the ER-α signalling pathway.