The BTB-zinc finger transcription factor Abrupt acts as an epithelial oncogene in Drosophila through maintaining a progenitor-like cell state

The capacity of tumor cells to maintain continual overgrowth potential has been linked to the commandeering of normal self-renewal pathways. Using an epithelial cancer model in Drosophila we carried out an overexpression screen for oncogenes capable of cooperating with the loss of the epithelial apico-basal cell polarity regulator, scribbled, and identified the cell fate regulator, Abrupt, a BTB-zinc finger protein. Abrupt overexpression alone is insufficient to transform cells, but in cooperation with scrib loss of function, Abrupt promotes the formation of massive tumors in the eye/antennal disc. The steroid hormone receptor coactivator, Taiman (SRC3/AIB1), is known to associate with Abrupt, and Taiman overexpression also drives tumor formation in cooperation with the loss of Scribbled. Expression arrays and ChIP-Seq indicates that Abrupt overexpression represses a large number of genes, including steroid hormone-response genes and multiple cell fate regulators, thereby maintaining cells within an epithelial progenitor-like state. The progenitor-like state is characterised by the failure to express the conserved Eyes absent/Dachshund regulatory complex in the eye disc, and in the antennal disc by the failure to express cell fate regulators that define the temporal elaboration of the appendage along the proximo-distal axis downstream of Distalless. Loss of scribbled promotes cooperation with Abrupt through impaired Hippo signaling, which is required and sufficient for cooperative overgrowth with Abrupt, and JNK signaling, which is required for tumor cell migration/invasion but not overgrowth. These results thus identify a novel cooperating oncogene, mammalian family members of which are also known oncogenes, and demonstrate that epithelial tumors in Drosophila can be characterised by the maintenance of a progenitor-like state. ChIP-Seq of Abrupt, ChIP-Seq of Abrupt (scrib-), Input, Input (scrib-)