Stable blood based miRNA species have allowed for the differentiation of patients with various types of cancer. Therefore, specific blood-based miRNA might be considered as a methodology which could be informative of the presence of cancer potentially from multiple distinct organ sites. Recently, miR-21 has been identified as an “oncomir” in various tumors while miR-152 as a tumor suppressor. In this study, we investigated whether circulating miR-21 and miR-152 can be used for early detection of lung cancer (LuCa), colorectal carcinoma (CRC), breast cancer (BrCa) and prostate cancer (PCa), with distinguishing cancer from various benign lesions on these organ sites. We measured the two miRNA levels by using real-time RT-PCR in plasma samples from a total of 204 cancer patients, 159 various benign lesions, and 228 normal subjects. We observed significantly elevated expression of miR-21 and miR-152 in LuCa, CRC, and BrCa when compared with normal controls. We also found upregulation of plasma miR-21 and miR-152 levels in patients with benign lesions of lung and breast, as compared to normal controls, respectively. No significant expression variation of the two miRNAs was observed in PCa or prostatic benign lesions as compared to healthy controls. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses revealed that miR-21 and/or miR-152 can discriminate LuCa, CRC and BrCa from normal controls. Our results suggest that plasma miR-21 and miR-152 may serve as non-specific noninvasive biomarkers for early screening of LuCa, CRC, and BrCa, but not PCa.

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BackgroundThe noble scallop Chlamys nobilis Reeve displays polymorphism in shell and muscle colors. Previous research showed that the orange scallops with orange shell and muscle had a significantly higher carotenoid content than the brown ones with brown shell and white muscle. There is currently a need to identify candidate genes associated with carotenoid-based coloration.ResultsIn the present study, 454 GS-FLX sequencing of noble scallop transcriptome yielded 1,181,060 clean sequence reads, which were assembled into 49,717 isotigs, leaving 110,158 reads as the singletons. Of the 159,875 unique sequences, 11.84% isotigs and 9.35% singletons were annotated. Moreover, 3,844 SSRs and over 120,000 high confidence variants (SNPs and INDELs) were identified. Especially, one class B scavenge receptor termed SRB-like-3 was discovered to express only in orange scallops and absent in brown ones, suggesting a significant association with high carotenoid content. Down-regulation of SRB-like-3 mRNA by RNA interference remarkably decreased blood carotenoid, providing compelling evidence that SRB-like-3 is an ideal candidate gene controlling carotenoid deposition and determining orange coloration.ConclusionTranscriptome analysis of noble scallop reveals a novel scavenger receptor significantly associated with orange scallop rich in carotenoid content. Our findings pave the way for further functional elucidation of this gene and molecular basis of carotenoid deposition in orange scallop.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-015-1241-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFAs) are essential in lots of important physiological processes, while, many marine species have no or limited ability of endogenous PUFA biosynthesis, normally due to the lack of key enzymes such as fatty acid desaturase (FAD). In this study, we isolated a scallop Chlamys nobilis cDNA with high homology to vertebrate FADs. Functional characterization in recombinant yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae showed that scallop FAD exhibited Δ5-desaturation activity towards both saturated and PUFA substrates. Thus, it efficiently desaturated exogenously added PUFA C20:4(n - 3) and C20:3(n - 6) to C20:5(n - 3) (EPA) and C20:4(n - 6) (ARA) respectively. It also converted the yeast's endogenous C18:0 into C18:1(n - 13), and participated in the biosynthesis of non-methylene-interrupted FA by introducing a double bond to C20:3(n - 3) and C20:2(n - 6) in the Δ5 carbon. Temporal transcript profile of scallop FAD was studied during early embryonic development. High level of mRNA was found at the beginning of embryogenesis (egg) and noticeable decreases of were observed during larvae development, suggesting maternal FAD mRNA transfer to the embryo. Further, FAD transcripts were detected in all tissues analyzed, with the gonad and hepatopancreas showing the highest expression.