Induction of apoptosis by epigenetic modulators in human breast cancer and expression profile of EZH2 and RAS signalling components

Abstract

Apoptosis is a process which self-destroys and removes unwanted cells in a body. It takes place to maintain a constant cell numbers and to balance the cell proliferation. Additionally apoptosis provide a defense mechanism by which damaged and potentially dangerous cells get eliminated from the body. Similarly it gets activated when cell has undergone DNA damage and as a result of which it induced apoptosis. Control of gene expression is exerted at a number of different levels, one of which is the accessibility of genes and their controlling elements to the transcriptional machinery. Accessibility is dictated broadly by the degree of chromatin compaction, which is influenced in part by polycomb group proteins. EZH2, together with SUZ12 and EED, forms the polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2), which catalyzes trimethylation of histone H3 at lysine 27 (H3K27me3).This study was aimed to defined the oncogenic role of EZH2 and Ras signaling components and it role in induction of apoptosis. The study was performed to know the role played by epigenetic modulators 5 Aza 2`deoxycytidine (AZA) and Trichostatin A (TSA) on MDA MB-231 cells and the changes takes place after adding these epigenetic modulators.