Short-term induction and long-term suppression of HPV16 oncogene silencing by RNA interference in cervical cancer cells

Abstract

RNA interference-mediated gene silencing has the potential to block gene expression. A synthetic double-stranded small interfering RNA (siRNA) based on a sequence motif of 21 nucleotides from human papillomavirus 16 (HPV16) E6E7 bicistronic RNA was found to be a potent siRNA that suppresses expression of both the E6 and E7 oncogenes in HPV16⁺ CaSki and SiHa cells. When stably expressed as a short hairpin RNA in these cells, however, siRNA silencing of E6 and E7 expression was efficient only at early cell passages, but became inefficient with increased cell passages despite the continued expression of the siRNA at the same level. The loss of the siRNA function was duplicable in stable p53 siRNA cells, but not in stable lamin A/C siRNA cells, suggesting that it is gene selective. The cells resistant to siRNA function retained normal siRNA processing, duplex unwinding and degradation of the unwound sense strand and RNA-induced silencing complex formation, suggesting that loss of the siRNA function occurred at a later step. Surprisingly, the siRNA-resistant cells were found to express notably a cytoplasmic protein of ∼50 kDa that specifically and characteristically interacted with the unwound, antisense strand E7 siRNA. Altogether, our data indicate that a potent siRNA targeting to an essential or regulatory gene might induce a cell to develop siRNA-suppressive function.