Yuejiao Huang, Xun Li, Yu Zhang, Xinliang Gu, Shiyi Qin, Ming Zheng, Han Wang, Shaoqing Ju
tsRNAs are a kind of small non-coding single-stranded RNA, which play an important role in many kinds of tumours. Previous studies have identified that tRF-31-U5YKFN8DYDZDD can be used as a novel tumour biomarker for the diagnosis and prognosis of gastric cancer (GC). In this study, we further explored the regulatory effect of tRF-31-U5YKFN8DYDZDD on tumour biological function in GC cells and related regulatory mechanisms. Inhibition of tRF-31-U5YKFN8DYDZDD can inhibit the proliferation, invasion, migration and angiogenesis of GC cells, while overexpression of tRF-31-U5YKFN8DYDZDD has the opposite effect. BMPER was shown to be a direct target of tRF-31-U5YKFN8DYDZDD in GC. Furthermore, the cytological effects of stable overexpression of BMPER were similar to the inhibition of tRF-31-U5YKFN8DYDZDD. And the attenuation of BMPER expression rescued the tRF-mediated promotion of GC cells. WB showed that up-regulation of tRF-31-U5YKFN8DYDZDD could increase the phosphorylation level of ERK and Smad1/5, and promote the expression of epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) and matrix metalloproteinases. Animal experiments in vivo show that down-regulation of tRF-31-U5YKFN8DYDZDD can effectively inhibit tumour growth. These data suggest that tRF-31-U5YKFN8DYDZDD is a new tumour-promoting factor and may be a potential new therapeutic target for GC.