Splice variants of TLE family genes and up-regulation of a TLE3 isoform in prostate tumors

The TLE genes constitute a family of important transcriptional co-repressors involved in many cellular processes. We found evidence of alternatively spliced mRNAs for human TLE1-4 containing premature stop codons, thus encoding putative shortened proteins. Microarray experiments and Real-time RT-PCR assays showed that alternatively spliced isoforms of TLE1, TLE2 and TLE3 were preferentially expressed in prostate in comparison to liver and kidney tissues. We identified by orientation-specific RT-PCR an antisense partially intronic non-coding RNA that overlaps a novel exon of the TLE3 gene, raising the possibility of regulation of alternative splicing by this non-coding transcript. The alternatively spliced isoform of TLE3 was up-regulated (6- to 17-fold) in prostate tumors in comparison to matched non-tumor adjacent tissue from 7 out of 11 (64%) patients and in four prostate tumor cell lines in comparison to a normal prostate cell line. These results demonstrate that different isoforms of TLE genes are commonly transcribed in human tissues and suggest that TLE3 could be involved in prostate cancer development. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.