Radioresistance related genes screened by protein-protein interaction network analysis in nasopharyngeal carcinoma / 中华放射医学与防护杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To discover radioresistance associated molecular biomarkers and its mechanism in nasopharyngeal carcinoma by protein-protein interaction network analysis.Methods Whole genome expression microarray was applied to screen out differentially expressed genes in two cell lines CNE- 2R and CNE-2 with different radiosensitivity.Four differentially expressed genes were randomly selected for further verification by the semi-quantitative RT-PCR analysis with self-designed primers. The common differentially expressed genes from two experiments were analyzed with the SNOW online database in order to find out the central node related to the biomarkers of nasopharyngeal carcinoma radioresistance. The expression of STAT1 in CNE-2R and CNE-2 cells was measured by Western blot.Results Compared with CNE-2 cells,374 genes in CNE-2R cells were differentially expressed while 197 genes showed significant differences.Four randomly selected differentially expressed genes were verified by RT-PCR and had same change trend in consistent with the results of chip assay. Analysis with the SNOW database demonstrated that those 197 genes could form a complicated interaction network where STAT1 and JUN might be two key nodes.Indeed,the STAT1-α expression in CNE-2R was higher than that in CNE-2 (t =4.96,P ＜ 0.05).Conclusions The key nodes of STAT1 and JUN may be the molecular biomarkers leading to radioresistance in nasopharyngeal carcinoma,and STAT1-α might have close relationship with radioresistance.