Retinoic acid receptor-related orphan receptor (ROR) α4 is the predominant isoform of the nuclear receptor RORα in the liver and is up-regulated by hypoxia in HepG2 human hepatoma cells

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Abstract
The retinoic acid receptor-related orphan receptor α (RORα) is critically involved in many physiological functions in several organs. We find that the main RORα isoform in the mouse liver is the RORα4 isoform, in terms of both mRNA and protein levels, while the RORα1 isoform is less abundant. Because hypoxia is a major feature of liver physiology and pathology, we examined the effect of this stress on Rora gene expression and RORα transcriptional activity. HepG2 human hepatoma cells were cultured for 24h under normoxia (20% O2) or hypoxia (10, 2, and 0.1% O2) and the abundance of the Rora transcripts measured by Northern blot and semi-quantitative RT-PCR. Hypoxic HepG2 cells contained more Rora mRNA than controls. This was also observed in rat hepatocytes in primary culture. Cobalt chloride and desferrioxamine also increased the amount of Rora mRNA in HepG2 cells. It is likely that these treatments increase the amount of the RORα4 protein in HepG2 cells as evidenced by Western blotting in the case of desferrioxamine. Transient transfection experiments indicated that hypoxia, cobalt chloride, and desferrioxamine all stimulate RORα transcriptional activity in HepG2 cells. Hence, we believe that RORα participates in the control of gene transcription in hepatic cells and modulates gene expression in response to hypoxic stress.

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