Detalle de: Metastasis epigenetics: epigenetic changes during epithelial to mesenchymal transition and its reversion

Epithelial and mesenchymal cellular phenotypes are the edges of a spectrum of states that can be transitory (also called metastable) or stable. The epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) and its reversion (MET) are common processes during embryonic development and have attracted considerable interest due to the fact that they seem to be related to tumor cells dissemination and migration, generation of tumor circulating cells, cancer stem cells, chemoresistance and metastasis formation.

A large reorganization of transcription patterns and epigenetic information, that we are only starting to understand, occurs during EMT and MET. In our group we investigate epigenetic changes that occurs during EMT and MET and the chromatin factors implicated. We have shown that the protein HMG20A, associated to the LSD1/CoREST histone demethylase complex, is involved in repression of epithelial genes during this process (Rivero et al., 2015). We are studying the role of HMG20A, and other factors identified in a genetic screen, in EMT, cancer and metastasis. We have found that HMG20A interacts with the histone reader PHF14 via the establishment of a two-stranded alpha-helical coiled-coil structure (Gómez-Marín et al., 2022).