Expression study of the Hodgkin’s lymphoma cell line L-1236 upon CRISPR Cas9-mediated knockout of lymphotoxin alpha (LTA) compared to control

Persistent NF-κB activation is a hallmark of the malignant Hodgkin/Reed-Sternberg (HRS) cells in classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL). Analysis of the cHL cell-secreted key factors for NF-κB activation by chromatography and subsequent mass spectrometry revealed lymphotoxin-α (LTA) as the causative factor for autocrine and paracrine activation of canonical and noncanonical NF-κB in cHL cell lines. Upon CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene knockout of LTA in the cell line L-1236, we performed expression analysis of LTA knockout versus control cells by using the Affymetrix array, Clariom S human, profiling tool. L-1236 cells were purchased from the DSMZ (Braunschweig, Germany) and cultured in RPMI (Gibco) with 10% heat-inactivated fetal calf serum (FCS; Gibco). Cells were transducted with the lentiCRIPSPR v2 vector containing gRNAs which target the second (g2) and the fourth exon (g3) of LTA. Following single cell clonal selection, L-1236 control cells (v2) and two LTA knockout (KO) clones g2_1 and g3_4 were cultured in normal culture medium for 72 h. The RNA was extracted using the RNeasy kit (Qiagen) according to manufacturer’s instructions. Preparation of cDNA, fragmentation and labeling was performed with the GeneChIPTM WT PLUS reagent kit (ThermoFisher Scientific). Samples were analyzed using the human Clariom™ S Assay (ThermoFisher Scientific).