Jiang Qingyan

The combination of a synthetic promoter and a CMV promoter improves foreign gene expression efficiency in myocytes

Skeletal muscle is becoming an attractive target tissue for gene therapy. Nevertheless, the low level of gene therapeutic expression in this tissue is the major limitation to it becoming an ideal target for gene transfer. The promoter is important element for gene transcription; however, the gene expression efficiencies and specificities of viral promoters and skeletal muscle-specific promotors are in themselves limiting factors. In this study, we established a dual-promoters system in skeletal muscle using a cytomegalovirus (CMV) promoter and a skeletal muscle-specific synthetic promoter. Mouse myoblast cell line C2C12 cells were transfected with the system. We demonstrated that the dual-promoters system could significantly improve exogenous gene expression rate in vitro when compared with a single CMV promoter system and a skeletal muscle-specific synthetic promoter system in C2C12 cell line, by 69.48% and 41.93%, respectively. Next, we evaluated the system efficiency in vivo, the results showed that the dual-promoters system increased gene expression in mice 1.23-fold and 1.60-fold, respectively compared with expression controlled by the two single promoter vectors. Finally, we tested the dual-promoters system in growth hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH) gene therapy, and revealed that when these two promoters co-drove the GHRH gene expression in vivo animal growth was enhanced significantly. All these results indicate that use of the dual-promoter vector was more efficient for gene expression in skeletal muscle tissue than use of the single promoter vectors. These finding could, hopefully, lead to the development of a high efficiency expression system in myocytes and form an ideal approach for gene therapy.

Activation of Pyruvate Dehydrogenase by Sodium Dichloroacetate Shifts Metabolic Consumption from Amino Acids to Glucose in IPEC-J2 Cells and Intestinal Bacteria in Pigs

The extensive metabolism of amino acids (AA) as fuel is an important reason for the low use efficiency of protein in pigs. In this study, we investigated whether regulation of the pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase (PDK)/pyruvate dehydrogenase alpha 1 (PDHA1) pathway affected AA consumption by porcine intestinal epithelial (IPEC-J2) cells and intestinal bacteria in pigs. The effects of knockdown of PDHA1 and PDK1 with small interfering RNA (siRNA) on nutrient consumption by IPEC-J2 cells were evaluated. IPEC-J2 cells were then cultured with sodium dichloroacetate (DCA) to quantify AA and glucose consumption and nutrient oxidative metabolism. The results showed that knockdown of PDHA1 using siRNA decreased glucose consumption but increased total AA (TAA) and glutamate (Glu) consumption by IPEC-J2 cells ( P < 0.05). Opposite effects were observed using siRNA targeting PDK1 ( P < 0.05). Additionally, culturing IPEC-J2 cells in the presence of 5 mM DCA markedly increased the phosphorylation of PDHA1 and PDH phosphatase 1, but inhibited PDK1 phosphorylation ( P < 0.05). DCA treatment also reduced TAA and Glu consumption and increased glucose depletion ( P < 0.05). These results indicated that PDH was the regulatory target for shifting from AA metabolism to glucose metabolism and that culturing cells with DCA decreased the consumption of AAs by increasing the depletion of glucose through PDH activation.