Runx transcriptional program for control of cell adhesion and survival

The Runx genes are important in development and cancer, where they can act either as oncogenes or tumour supressors. We compared the effects of ectopic Runx expression in established fibroblasts, where all three genes produce an indistinguishable phenotype entailing epithelioid morphology and increased cell survival under stress conditions. Gene array analysis revealed a strongly overlapping transcriptional signature, with no examples of opposing regulation of the same target gene. A common set of 50 highly regulated genes was identified after further filtering on regulation by inducible RUNX1-ER. This set revealed a strong bias toward genes with annotated roles in cancer and development, and a preponderance of targets encoding extracellular or surface proteins reflecting the marked effects of Runx on cell adhesion. Keywords: Comparative study of gene targets regulated by overexpression of the different Runx family members 6 samples (expression of different Runx family members); 5 in duplicate, 1 single. 2 control samples (empty vector) in duplicate. Cultures of Runx expressing cells were grown to confluence, treated with ethanol +/- 4OHT tamoxifen for 24 hours and harvested for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays

Runx基因在发育进程与癌症发生中发挥关键作用，既可作为癌基因（oncogene），也可作为肿瘤抑制因子（tumour suppressor）。
本研究对比了异位表达Runx基因对已建立成纤维细胞的影响，结果显示三个Runx家族基因均可诱导出无法区分的表型，具体表现为上皮样形态，以及应激条件下细胞存活率的提升。
基因芯片（gene array）分析表明，三者的转录调控特征高度重叠，未发现同一靶基因被反向调控的案例。通过对诱导型RUNX1-ER调控的基因进行进一步筛选，本研究鉴定出一组共50个受高度调控的共同基因。该基因集显著富集于注释有癌症与发育相关功能的基因中，且编码细胞外蛋白或表面蛋白的靶基因占比偏高，这与Runx家族对细胞黏附的显著调控效应相契合。
关键词：不同Runx家族成员过表达调控的基因靶标比较研究
实验样本：6份过表达不同Runx家族成员的实验组样本（其中5份设置生物学重复，1份为单样本）；2份空载体对照样本（均设置生物学重复）。
实验流程：将表达Runx基因的细胞培养至汇合状态，采用乙醇配合或不配合4OHT他莫昔芬（tamoxifen）处理24小时后收获细胞，用于RNA提取及Affymetrix基因芯片杂交。