Several
adenosine or
cytidine deaminase enzymes deaminate transcript sequences in a cell type or environment-dependent manner by a programmed process called RNA editing. RNA editing
enzymes catalyze A>I or C>U transcript alterations and have the potential to change
protein coding sequences. In this brief review, we highlight some recent work that shows aberrant patterns of RNA editing in
cancer. Transcriptome sequencing studies reveal increased or decreased global RNA editing levels depending on the
tumor type. Altered RNA editing in
cancer cells may provide a selective advantage for
tumor growth and resistance to apoptosis. RNA editing may promote
cancer by dynamically recoding oncogenic genes, regulating oncogenic gene expression by
noncoding RNA and
miRNA editing, or by transcriptome scale changes in RNA editing levels that may affect innate immune signaling. Although RNA editing markedly increases complexity of the
cancer cell transcriptomes,
cancer-specific recoding RNA editing events have yet to be discovered. Epitranscriptomic changes by RNA editing in
cancer represent a novel mechanism contributing to sequence diversity independently of
DNA mutations. Therefore, RNA editing studies should
complement genome sequence data to understand the full impact of
nucleic acid sequence alterations in
cancer.
Cancer Res; 77(14); 3733-9. ©2017 AACR.