Transcriptomic analysis of neuroblastoma cells in response to stable over-expression of GATA2 antisense RNA 1 (GATA2-AS1)

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), one type of endogenous RNA longer than 200 nucleotides, play emerging roles in tumorigenesis and aggressiveness. However, the functions and underlying mechanisms of lncRNAs in regulating neuroblastoma progression still remain elusive. We identify GATA2 antisense RNA 1 (GATA2-AS1), a lncRNA derived from GATA binding protein 2 (GATA2), as a novel suppressor of neuroblastoma progression. To investigate the mechanisms underlying the oncogenic functions of GATA2-AS1, we employed the Illumina HiSeq X Ten as a discovery platform to analyze the transcriptome profiling changes of human neuroblastoma BE(2)-C cells in response to stable over-expression of GATA2-AS1. The results showed that stable over-expression of GATA2-AS1 led to altered expression of 1933 human mRNAs, including 857 up-regulated genes and 1076 down-regulated genes. Furthermore, we validated the RNA-seq results by real-time RT-PCR with high identity. Overall, our results provided fundamental information about the transcriptomic changes in response to GATA2-AS1 over-expression in human tumor cells, and these findings will help us understand the pathogenesis of tumor progression. Total RNA of cells stably transfected with empty vector or GATA2-AS1 was extracted using the TRIzol® reagent according to the manufacturer's instructions. RNA concentration was measured using a Qubit® RNA Assay Kit with a Qubit® 2.0 Fluorometer (Life Technologies, Inc.), and integrity was assessed using the RNA Nano 6000 Assay Kit with a Bioanalyzer 2100 system (Agilent Technologies, CA). Library preparation and transcriptome sequencing on an Illumina HiSeq X Ten platform were performed by Wuhan SeqHealth Technology Co., Ltd. (Wuhan, China), and 100 bp paired-end reads were generated. HTSeq v0.6.0 was used to count the reads numbers mapped to each gene.