Objective: Autophagy is a cellular pathway that regulates the transportation and degradation of cytoplasmic macromolecules and organelles towards lysosome, which is often related to the tumorigenesis and tumor suppression. Here, we investigate the regulating effect of PTEN gene on autophagy-related protein P62 in rat colorectal cancer (CRC) cells and explore the application value of PTEN gene in clinic.
Methods: Rat colorectal cancer was induced by intraperitoneal injection of 1,2-dimethyl hydrazine in male ACI rats. A total of 20 rats were randomly selected from those successfully induced with CRC as the experimental group, while 10 healthy rats as control. The rat CRC cells were isolated and cultured. After transfecting the rat CRC cells with pEGFP-N1-PTEN plasmid, RT-PCR was adopted to examine that gene expression of p62 and PTEN, while Western blotting was used to detect the protein expression of p62 and PTEN. Also, the proliferation of CRC cells was measured by MTT assay.
Results: The expression of PTEN gene in the experimental group was significantly inhibited as compared with the control group, while the expression of P62 gene was significantly increased (p < 0.05). Western blotting demonstrated that the PTEN protein in the experimental group was lower, while the expression of P62 protein was higher. When the CRC cells were transfected with pEGFP-N1-PTEN plasmid, the PTEN expressions were elevated, while p62 was down-regulated. Also, the proliferation of CRC cells was inhibited.
Conclusion: The expression of PTEN gene is negatively correlated with the expression of P62 gene in rat CRC cells. And the expression of PTEN gene can inhibit the occurrence and development of colorectal cancer, thus providing theoretical basis for future clinical treatment.
Keywords: Autophagy; Colorectal cancer; PTEN gene; Regulation; p62; pEGFP-N1-PTEN plasmid.
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