Large-Scale Identification of Functional Genes Regulating Cancer Cell Migration and Metastasis Using the Self-Assembled Cell Microarray
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Large-scale Identification of Functional Genes Regulating Cancer Cell Migration and Metastasis Using the Self-assembled Cell Microarray A Dissertation Presented to The Academic Faculty By Hanshuo Zhang A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Biomedical Engineering 2013 Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University August 2013 Copyright © 2013 by Hanshuo Zhang Large-scale Identification of Functional Genes Regulating Cancer Cell Migration and Metastasis Using the Self-assembled Cell Microarray Approved by: Dr. Jianzhong Xi, Advisor Dr. Chunyang Xiong, Committee Member Department of Biomedical Engineering Department of Biomedical Engineering Collage of Engineering Collage of Engineering Peking University Peking University Dr. May Dongmei Wang, Co-advisor Dr. Xiaoyu Li, Committee Member Department of Biomedical Engineering Collage of Chemistry and Molecular Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory Engineering University Peking University Dr. Brani Vidakovic, Committee Member Department of Biomedical Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University Date Approved: June 03, 2013 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I wish to thank my advisor Dr. Jianzhong Xi and co-advisor Dr. May Wang, for educating and supporting me to accomplish the research work of my PhD career. I wish to thank other thesis committee members, including Dr. Brani Vidakovic, Dr. Chunyang Xiong, and Dr. Xiaoyu Li, for directing and suggesting me with my thesis. Secondly, I wish to thank lab members of both Dr. Xi’s lab and Dr. Wang’s lab, including Yang Hao, Junyu Yang, Shenyi Yin, Ming Ma, Yanzhen Ye, Qi Wang, Dr. Kuaichang Zhu, Dr. Changhong Sun, Dr. Huang Huang, Dr. Zhao Wang, Dr. Yu Fan, Dr. Huiping Yuan and Dr. Juan Li of Xi lab and Leo Wu, Raghu Chandramohan, James Cheng, Chanchala Kaddi, Koon-Yin Kong, Sonal Kothari, Janani Venugopalan, Dr. John H. Phan and Dr. Todd H. Stokes of Wang lab, for helping me with my research work. Thirdly, I wish to thank the collaborator labs, including Dr. Yanyi Huang’s lab, Dr. Jin Gu’s lab, Dr. Xiaoyu Li’ lab, Dr. Li Yu’s lab and Dr. Peace Chen’ lab, for collaborating with me to accomplish many research projects. Finally, I wish to thank my family for always supporting and encouraging me to accomplish my PhD career. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................................. vi LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................................. vii LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................ viii SUMMARY ........................................................................................................................................ ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1 1.2 RNA interference technology ...................................................................................................... 2 1.2.1 Biogenesis and mechanism of miRNA ...................................................................................... 3 1.2.2 RNAi high-throughput screening .............................................................................................. 5 1.3 miRNAs governing cancer metastasis ......................................................................................... 6 1.3.1 miRNA as metastasis activator ................................................................................................. 7 1.3.2 miRNA as metastasis suppressor .............................................................................................. 8 1.3.3 miRNA involved in EMT ............................................................................................................ 9 1.4 Protein kinase modulating cancer metastasis ........................................................................... 11 1.4.1 Protein kinase as biomarker for diagnosis ............................................................................. 11 1.4.2 Protein kinase as drug target for therapy............................................................................... 12 1.5 Research approaches for migratory genes ................................................................................ 12 1.5.1 Conventional migration assays ............................................................................................... 12 1.5.2 HTS assays for identification of migratory genes ................................................................... 13 1.6 Problem statement and content of this thesis .......................................................................... 14 CHAPTER 2 DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-ASSEMBLED CELL MICROARRAY ......................................... 16 2.1 Fabrication of SAMcell .............................................................................................................. 16 2.2 SAMcell studying cell migration ................................................................................................ 18 2.3 Statistical preparation for HTS ................................................................................................... 19 2.4 Summary of SAMcell method ................................................................................................... 21 CHAPTER 3 SCREENING OF HUMAN GENOME MIRNAS REGULATING CANCER METASTASIS ...... 23 3.1 Screening of miRNAs regulating cell migration ......................................................................... 23 3.2 General regulation of miRNA on cell migration ........................................................................ 33 iv 3.3 Results of the miRNA functional screens .................................................................................. 35 3.4 miR-23b inhibiting metastasis-related traits ............................................................................. 40 3.5 miR-23b repressing EMT ........................................................................................................... 41 3.6 Expression patterns of miR-23b ................................................................................................ 43 3.7 miR-23b regulating a cohort of prometastatic genes ................................................................ 44 3.8 Summary of miRNA screening................................................................................................... 47 CHAPTER 4 SCREENING OF HUMAN GENOME KINASE GENES REGULATING CANCER METASTASIS ........................................................................................................................................................ 49 4.1 Strategy of systematic investigation .......................................................................................... 49 4.2 Loss-of-function study of kinase genes regulating cell migration ............................................. 50 4.3 Functional screening for cell migration and invasion ................................................................ 51 4.4 Bioinformatics analysis to identify important genes ................................................................. 61 4.5 Experimental validation of prospective metastasis-related genes ............................................ 74 4.6 Summary of kinase screening ................................................................................................... 75 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................... 77 APPENDIX A SEQUENCE OF PRIMERS AND BINDING SITES .............................................. 78 APPENDIX B METHODS AND MATERIAL ................................................................................... 81 REFERENCES .................................................................................................................................... 84 PUBLICATIONS ................................................................................................................................. 95 VITA ................................................................................................................................................. 97 v LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1A List of human miRNAs examined in this work .................................. 24 Table 3.1B List of miRNAs capable of regulating cell migration ........................ 28 Table 3.1C List of miRNAs demonstrating non-concordant behaviors ................ 32 Table 3.3A List of miRNAs capable of inhibiting cell invasion ........................... 36 Table 3.3B List of miRNAs capable of inhibiting cell migration, invasion and promoting apoptosis ....................................................................................... 38 Table 4.3A List of entire 710 kinase genes screened ............................................ 54 Table 4.3B List of PR genes validated by Transwell............................................ 56 Table 4.3C List of discordant genes interfered by proliferation or apoptosis ....... 58 Table 4.3D List of invasion screening results