title: Absence of PIWIL2 (HILI) expression in human bladder cancer cell lines and tissues.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  PIWIL2, a member of Argonaute family of proteins, is exclusively expressed in testis and functions in development and maintenance of germline stem cells. Recently, ectopic expression of PIWIL2 has been reported in a variety of human and mouse tumors. To investigate a potential involvement of PIWIL2 in human bladder cancer, we examined its expression in several human bladder cancer cell lines, normal uroepithelial cell cultures, and some bladder tissues.
  
  
  METHODS
  Relative expression of PIWIL2 was determined by real-time quantitative RT-PCR in fifteen bladder carcinoma cell lines, six normal uroepithelial cell cultures and seventy tissue specimens of tumor, tumor margins and morphologically normal tissues of bladder. Specific primers for PIWIL2, TBP and GAPDH (as two internal controls) were used for reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction technique.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Real-time qRT-PCR demonstrated high PIWIL2 expression in testis tissue, but at least 240-fold lower expression in all examined cell lines. The highest expression outside testis was observed in one of six primary cultures of normal uroepithelial cells, but even lower expression of PIWIL2 was detected in any of the examined tumor and non-tumor tissues.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Lack of PIWIL2 expression in most tissues along with its aberrant expression in some tumors candidate the gene as an attractive tumor marker for some neoplasms. However, our study indicates that PIWIL2 does not play a role in carcinogenesis of human bladder carcinoma.
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, Faculty of Basic Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Parvaneh
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Nikpour
authors.forename: Mehdi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Forouzandeh-Moghaddam
authors.forename: Seyed Amir-Mohsen
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Ziaee
authors.forename: Olusola Y
authors.initials: OY
authors.lastname: Dokun
authors.forename: Wolfgang Arthur
authors.initials: WA
authors.lastname: Schulz
authors.forename: Seyed Javad
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Mowla
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D060565:Argonaute Proteins; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D045744:Cell Line, Tumor; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D005260:Female; D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011506:Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D013737:Testis / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism; D001743:Urinary Bladder / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism; D001749:Urinary Bladder Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics*; D019459:Urothelium / Q000166:cytology
chemical_list: D060565:Argonaute Proteins; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; C486868:PIWIL2 protein, human; D011506:Proteins