Pirin Promotes the Progression of Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer by Increasing ODC1 to Suppress Autophagy.

Non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), a common malignant tumor, requires deeper pathogenesis investigation. Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved lysosomal degradation process that is frequently blocked during cancer progression. It is an urgent need to determine the novel autophagy-associated regulators in NSCLC. Here, we found that pirin was upregulated in NSCLC, and its expression was positively correlated with poor prognosis. Overexpression of pirin inhibited autophagy and promoted NSCLC proliferation. We then performed data-independent acquisition-based quantitative proteomics to identify the differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) in pirin-overexpression (OE) or pirin-knockdown (KD) cells. Among the pirin-regulated DEPs, ornithine decarboxylase 1 (ODC1) was downregulated in pirin-KD cells while upregulated along with pirin overexpression. ODC1 depletion reversed the pirin-induced autophagy inhibition and pro-proliferation effect in A549 and H460 cells. Immunohistochemistry showed that ODC1 was highly expressed in NSCLC cancer tissues and positively related with pirin. Notably, NSCLC patients with pirinhigh/ODC1high had a higher risk in terms of overall survival. In summary, we identified pirin and ODC1 as a novel cluster of prognostic biomarkers for NSCLC and highlighted the potential oncogenic role of the pirin/ODC1/autophagy axis in this cancer type. Targeting this pathway represents a possible therapeutic approach to treat NSCLC.

Differentiation of the Chinese minority medicinal plant genus Berchemia spp. by evaluating three candidate barcodes.

The genus Berchemia comprises important Chinese plants with considerable medicinal value; however, these plants are often misidentified in the herbal medicinal market. To differentiate the various morphotypes of Berchemia species, a proficient method employing the screening of universal DNA barcodes was used in this work. Three candidate barcoding loci, namely, psbA-trnH, rbcL, and the second internal transcribed spacer (ITS2), were used to identify an effective DNA barcode that can differentiate the various Berchemia species. Additionally, PCR amplification, efficient sequencing, intra- and inter-specific divergences, and DNA barcoding gaps were employed to assess the ability of each barcode to identify these diverse Berchemia plants authentically; the species were differentiated using the Kimura two-parameter and maximum composite likelihood methods. Sequence data analysis showed that the ITS2 region was the most suitable candidate barcode and exhibited the highest interspecific divergence among the three DNA-barcoding sequences. A clear differentiation was observed at the species level, in which a maximum distance of 0.264 was exhibited between dissimilar species. Clustal analysis also demonstrated that ITS2 clearly differentiated the test species in a more effective manner than that with the two other barcodes at both the hybrid and variety levels. Results indicate that DNA barcoding is ideal for species-level identification of Berchemia and provides a foundation for further identification at the molecular level of other Rhamnaceae medicinal plants.