Expression of telomerase prevents ALT and maintains telomeric heterochromatin in juvenile brain tumors.

The up-regulation of a telomere maintenance mechanism (TMM) is an essential step in cancer progression to escape dysfunctional telomeres, senescence and apoptosis. Paediatric brain tumors frequently exhibit Alternative Lengthening of Telomere (ALT) as active TMM, but the mechanisms involved in the induction of ALT in brain tumor cells are not clear. Here, we report a model of juvenile zebrafish brain tumor that progressively develops ALT. We discovered that reduced expression of tert and increase in Terra expression precedes ALT development. Additionally, tumors show persistent telomeric DNA damage and loss of heterochromatin marks. Comparative analysis of gene expression after the rescue of ALT with telomerase and analysis of telomerase positive paediatric brain cancers showed normalization of telomeric heterochromatin and maintenance of telomere length, with reduced expression of genes of the pre-replicative complex as hallmark. Thus our study identifies telomere maintenance mechanisms as major drivers of DNA replication and chromatin status at telomeres in brain cancers. In order to identify the genes involved in the development of alternative lenghtening of telomeres in juvenile brain cancer, we performed RNA sequencing analysis (RNA-Seq), of the transcriptome of two zebrafish models of brain cancer, one ALT+ and the other telomerase+.