The human C17orf25 gene (Accession No. AF177342) is one of thirteen genes cloned from a region displaying a high score of loss of heterozygosity within chromosome 17p13.3 in human hepatocellular carcinoma in China [1]. To unveil the underlying mechanisms for the transcription regulation of this gene and understand its implication to the hepatocellular carcinogenesis, we looked into the relevant aspects by both bioinformatic and experimental executions. We found: 1, The abundant expression of the C17orf25 gene was evident in all the cell lines and tissue samples tested, showing little hepatoma-selectivity; 2, Its transcription starts at a single site, locating at -60 from the translation initiation codon; 3, A 58 bp fragment containing the transcription start, extending from -112 to -55, represents the minimal promoter; 4, The consensus sequence within this fragment recognized by SP1 contributes predominantly to the activity of the minimal promoter; 5, The bioinformatic analysis suggests that the C17orf25 gene may encode a protein in the family of the glyoxalase. Our data has provided some deep insight into both function and regulation of the C17orf25 gene in the context of the normal liver and hepatocellular carcinoma.

The hepatocellular carcinoma suppressor 1 (HCCS1) gene was identified by both positional cloning from a predominant region of loss of heterozygosity (17p13.3) in liver cancer and by functional screening for genes affecting cell proliferation in large-scale transfection assays. Its overexpression results in inhibition of cell proliferation in cell culture and tumor growth in nude mice. To understand its transcription regulation, the promoter architecture has been dissected in detail. The major start of transcription was mapped by primer extension to a C residue, 177 nucleotides upstream of the ATG codon. By assessing the promoter activity of a set of linker-scanning mutants of the minimal promoter (-60 to +148 region) in a transient transfection assay, we found that the +1 to + 40 region is critical to HCCS1 gene transcription, containing binding sites for transcription factors NF-κB (-21 to +7 and +40 to +26), p53 (+29 to +9) and ETS (+4 to +20 and +23 to +39). Biochemical and molecular analyses revealed that the ETS transcription factors ETS-2 and Elf-1 bind to the two ETS sites in situ and contribute significantly to the transcriptionally active state of the HCCS1 gene, while NF-κB, p53 and two other members of the ETS family (ETS-1 and NERF2) appear to play little role. Our observations provide insight into the mechanistic aspects of HCCS1 transcription regulation.