Figure 10

Overexpression of WNK1 in HepG2 cells significantly increases the migrated cells, and the co-expression of PPP2R1A can decrease the migrated cells caused by WNK1 overexpression in hepatoma cells. (a) The protein levels of WNK1 and PPP2R1A were examined by Western blot. (b) Western blot indicates that overexpression of WNK1 in HepG2 cells significantly increases the WNK1 protein levels. (c) Overexpression of PPP2R1A in HepG2 cells significantly increases the PPP2R1A protein levels. (d) The modulated expression of WNK1 and PPP2R1A in HepG2 hepatoma cells that were seeded in the upper chamber while HUVEC cells were loaded in the lower chamber of the transwell plate. (e) Representative images of hepatoma cell migration. The scale bar is 200 µm in length. (f) Quantified data of the transwell migration assay reveal that overexpression of WNK1 in HepG2 cells significantly increases the migrated cells, indicating that WNK1 plays an important role in hepatoma cells for stimulating hepatoma cell migration. Overexpression of PPP2R1A in HepG2 cells can revert the increased migrated cells caused by WNK1, indicating that PPP2R1A is a downstream effector for hepatoma cell migration. We performed three replicates for each Western blot and transwell analysis. One-way ANOVA analysis followed by multiple analysis of variance was used to identify the statistical significance between groups. *: p ≦ 0.05.