earticle

영어

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition(EMT) is a program of developing cells characterized by loss of cell adhesion and increased cell mobility. EMT is required in many developmental processes, such as gastrulation and neural crest migration. In the pathological aspect, deregulation of EMT can induce tumor progression in cancer cells. Snail is transcriptional repressor of E-cadherin, which regulates cell adhesion in epithelial cells, and the repression of E-cadherin is thought to play a major role in the abnormal manifestation of EMT. O-GlcNAc modification is a post-translational modification, which is occurredin nucleus and cytosol. Many proteins, including transcription factors, cytoskeletal proteins and various enzymes, are known to be O-GlcNAcylated. Here we firstly report that snail is an O-GlcNAcylated protein and O-GlcNAc modification on snail increases the stability of snail. In the hyperglycemic conditions, snail protein was accumulated, but mRNA level did not increase. Snail is known to be down-regulated by phosphorylation which is a signal for ubiquitin-proteasome protein degradation pathway. When O-GlcNAcylation of snail was increased, ubiquitination on snail was decreased by inhibition of phosphorylation.