Effect of HSF1 overexpression in non-tumorigenic human breast epithelial MCF10A cell line

To elucidate the mechanism of the epithelial-mesenchymal transition observed in MCF10A cell with HSF1 overexpression, we performed RNA-seq analyses. They revealed that cadherin signaling pathway (P00012) was the most enriched in the set of genes down-regulated in these cells. In addition to CDH1 and CDH2, 19 genes encoding protocadherins also showed reduced expression. Among the genes most severely affected in cells with HSF1 overexpression were many genes encoding cell adhesion or cytoskeleton-organizing proteins (e.g. GJA5, NID2, TUBA1A, MFAP5, TAGLN were inhibited, TTC25, CADM3, IQGAP2, SDK2, CEACAM6, FAT2 were upregulated). Overall design: To investigate the action of HSF1 in MCF10A cells, we established cells with stable HSF1 overexpression using lentiviruses. We then performed gene expression profilling using data from RNA-seq.