Thomas Boyer and Sang Eun Lee at University of Texas Health Center-San Antonio for their critiques of and suggestions for this manuscript. Author contributions: LPF: conceived and designed the studies, provided study material, completed experiments, collected and assembled data, analyzed and interpreted data, wrote the manuscript; QY: conceived and designed the studies, provided financial support; DS: conceived and designed parts of the study, provided study material; AK: conceived and designed parts of the study; AM: conceived and designed a part of the study, completed experiments; AA-H: Docebenone conceived and designed the studies, provided financial support, provided study material, wrote the manuscript. Notes Gene expression data was deposited into the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO): “type”:”entrez-geo”,”attrs”:”text”:”GSE106655″,”term_id”:”106655″GSE106655. Edited by Dr. as causal for UF development [27]. Despite the high frequency of UFs (estimates of the prevalence of these tumors lie around 80%), the underlying origin(s) for these driver and other mutations remains unknown. UFs, by definition, have a very low mitotic index [28C31], adding to the paradoxical nature of the observed high frequency of driver mutations in these tumors. For this study we have used an animal model of UFs, the Eker (allele [32C34]. In previous studies, we have shown that Eker rats developmentally exposed to diethylstilbestrol (DES, a tool compound of environmental endocrine-disrupting chemicals [EDCs]) during early life form fibroids later in adult life at higher frequency (100% tumor penetrance) and increased size, number, and severity versus unexposed counterparts (65% penetrance) [2, 35]. These DES-exposed rats have also been shown to develop the UF tumors earlier in adult life (12 months of age), which may be attributed to more rapid accumulation of DNA damage, potentially leading to an earlier loss of the second normal allele. These findings strongly suggest increased mutagenesis and decreased ability to appropriately repair DNA damage/breaks in these developmentally early-life EDC-exposed animals [2, 35]. We have recently shown that the Stro1+/CD44+ myometrial stem/progenitor-like cell (MSC) population isolated from these DES-exposed rats uteri are expanded in number and proliferate significantly faster than normal MSCs, suggesting their integral role in increased penetrance of UF tumors in DES-exposed rats [21]. A normal eukaryotic cell generates 70,000 DNA lesions each day that may generate mutations; most frequently, single-nucleotide substitutions incorporated by DNA polymerases, through normal replication processes, accumulate at a low, but constant rate [8, 22]. Even small errors in DNA synthesis can cause many mutations, thus underscoring replication machinery as a source of mutagenesis; post-replication DNA repair processes involve homologous recombination (HR) double-strand break (DSB) repair, thus suggesting that DNA DSBs persisting post-replication may remain irreparable if HR components are compromised [22, 36]. Thus, this expanded, highly proliferative MSC population is at increased risk of DNA mutations during replication; this increased chance of mutation, combined with putatively impaired DNA repair systems, implicates the DES-exposed rat MSCs in the more penetrant development of UF tumors in the exposed Eker rats. In this work, we aimed to evaluate the DNA repair system in the Stro1+/CD44+ MSC population of an early-life EDC-exposed versus unexposed (normal) rat fibroid model to explore whether the changes induced in these rats exposed to DES during the sensitive window of early uterine development include Docebenone dysregulation and/or impairment of DNA repair systems as well. Materials and methods Environmental exposure animal model Roughly 65% of Eker rats, which carry a germline mutation in the tuberous sclerosis 2 (pGL2-control vector plasmid DNA (Supplemental Figure S1A, Promega, Madison, WI) was used to transform DH5 cells for plasmid amplification and was then isolated using PureYield Plasmid Midiprep System (Promega). restriction enzyme digestion (New England Biolabs) in CutSmart Buffer (New England Biolabs) Docebenone was completed for SV40-pGL2-control plasmid to linearize the plasmid and disrupt promoter-driven luciferase Docebenone activity. test; a mean significantly different from 1 indicated DES protein expression differed from that in VEH cells. Differences were considered significant at (C1.99, (C1.16, (C1.05, (C3.10, (C1.27, (C1.57, (C1.30, (C1.07, (C1.93, (C1.59, (C0.77, (C1.56(C0.78, (C1.15, (C1.95, (C1.67, (C0.85, (7.02, (4.37, (1.29, (2.32, (2.76, (3.13, (1.69, (1.94, C1.99, (C1.16, (C1.05, (C3.10, (C1.27, (C1.57, (C1.30, (C1.07, C1.93, (C1.59, (C0.77, (C1.56(C0.78, (C1.15, (C1.95, (C1.67, (C0.85, allele, leading to increased risk of fibroid tumorigenesis. Open in a Ang separate window Figure 5. Increased DNA.