Gene expression data of EMT-TFs overexpressing ovarian cancer cell lines

Recent findings show that EMT in cancer is dynamic and display a number of intermediate stages along the transition to obtain a high phenotypic and functional cellular plasticity. To comprehend transcriptional regulation among major EMT-transcription factors (EMT-TFs) along the EMT spectrum, we performed gene expression profiles of EMT-TFs (SNAI1/2, ZEB1/2, TWIST1) overexpressing epithelial (PEO1, OVCA420) and intermediate epithelial (OVCA429) ovarian cancer cell clones. Our results show that these factors generate an unidirectional repressive regulation in cells with epithelial phenotype (PEO1, OVCA420), whereas a bidirectional activation regulation in cells with intermediate epithelial phenotype (OVCA429). Microarray data analysis of these EMT-TFs overexpression clones revealed a distinct signature of gene expression for each phenotype and the overlapping gene set show a strong negative correlation with EMT scores, indicating that loss of this gene set is essential to trigger EMT. Stable clones overexpressing the core EMT-TFs: SNAI1 (S1), ZEB1 (Z1), ZEB2 (Z2), and TWIST1 (T1) were generated in two epithelial cell lines, PEO1 and OVCA420 (420) and one IE cell line OVCA429 (429), with the empty vector (EV) as controls. After antibiotic selection, ZEB1-PEO1 and all SNAI2-overexpression clones failed to survive. All samples were prepared as biological duplicates.