The construction of the eukaryotic expression plasmid pcDNA3.1/azurin and the increased apoptosis of U2OS cells transfected with it

Cellular & Molecular Biology Letters

Huiqin Peng¹  Jie Feng²  Zhaoming Ye²  Yongming Fang³  Di-Sheng Yang² 

[1] Department of Microbiology, Medical College, Zhejiang University, , P.R. China$$;Department of Orthopedics, Second Affiliated Hospital, Medical College, Zhejiang University, Zhejiang, P.R. China$$;Institute of Cancer Research, Second Affiliated Hospital, Medical College, Zhejiang University, , P.R. China$$

关键词: Azurin;    Transfection;    Osteosarcoma;    Apoptosis;   

DOI  :  10.2478/s11658-007-0012-3

学科分类：分子生物学，细胞生物学和基因

来源: Uniwersytet Wroclawski * Wydzial Biotechnologii / University of Wroclaw, Faculty of Biotechnology

【 摘 要 】

In our previous study, we demonstrated that azurin could selectively trigger apoptosis in human osteosarcoma cell line U2OS cells. However, the rate of apoptosis (35.8 ± 3.2%) is not very high, and azurin is too expensive to obtain readily. To solve these problems, we constructed a eukaryotic expression plasmid containing the azurin gene with an influenza virus haemagglutinin 9 peptide HA epitope tag, and transfected the recombinant plasmid pcDNA3.1(+)/azurin into U2OS cells. RT-PCR and Western blot analysis validated the successful transfection and the expression of the azurin-HA protein. Conspicuous apoptosis of the transfected cells was detected by flow cytometry (FCM) and the DNA ladder test. The apoptosis rate reached 64.3 ± 13.1%. The transcriptional levels of the Bax and p53 genes increased significantly in U2OS cells transfected with pcDNA3.1(+)/azurin, but the Bcl-2 mRNA level decreased. There was no difference in the levels of Bcl-xl mRNA and Survivin mRNA. We propose that the transfection of the recombinant plasmid pcDNA3.1(+)/azurin can significantly induce apoptosis in U2OS cells. This is closely associated with the up-regulation of the transcriptional level of the Bax and p53 genes, and the down-regulation of that of the Bcl-2 gene.

【 授权许可】

Unknown