Effects of SOX2 on Proliferation, Migration and Adhesion of Human Dental Pulp Stem Cells

PLoS One. 2015 Oct 23;10(10):e0141346. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0141346. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

As a key factor for cell pluripotent and self-renewing phenotypes, SOX2 has attracted scientists' attention gradually in recent years. However, its exact effects in dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) are still unclear. In this study, we mainly investigated whether SOX2 could affect some biological functions of DPSCs. DPSCs were isolated from the dental pulp of human impacted third molar. SOX2 overexpressing DPSCs (DPSCs-SOX2) were established through retroviral infection. The effect of SOX2 on cell proliferation, migration and adhesion ability was evaluated with CCK-8, trans-well system and fibronectin-induced cell attachment experiment respectively. Whole genome expression of DPSCs-SOX2 was analyzed with RNA microarray. Furthermore, a rescue experiment was performed with SOX2-siRNA in DPSC-SOX2 to confirm the effect of SOX2 overexpression in DPSCs. We found that SOX2 overexpression could result in the enhancement of cell proliferation, migration, and adhesion in DPSCs obviously. RNA microarray analysis indicated that some key genes in the signal pathways associated with cell cycle, migration and adhesion were upregulated in different degree, and the results were further confirmed with qPCR and western-blot. Finally, DPSC-SOX2 transfected with SOX2-siRNA showed a decrease of cell proliferation, migration and adhesion ability, which further confirmed the biological effect of SOX2 in human DPSCs. This study indicated that SOX2 could improve the cell proliferation, migration and adhesion ability of DPSCs through regulating gene expression about cell cycle, migration and adhesion, and provided a novel strategy to develop seed cells with strong proliferation, migration and adhesion ability for tissue engineering.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult Stem Cells / physiology*
  • Cell Adhesion
  • Cell Differentiation
  • Cell Movement
  • Cell Proliferation
  • Cells, Cultured
  • Dental Pulp / cytology*
  • Gene Expression
  • Humans
  • SOXB1 Transcription Factors / genetics
  • SOXB1 Transcription Factors / metabolism*

Substances

  • SOX2 protein, human
  • SOXB1 Transcription Factors

Associated data

  • GEO/GSE73548

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81570944), Project (No.2015009) supported by Graduate Innovation Fund of Jilin University, Guangzhou science and technology program project (201505011555341), Science and Technology Development Project of Jilin Province (No. 20120955), and Scientific Research of Health Department of Jilin Province (No. 2009Z043).