Knock Down of ARID2 Limits Cell Growth in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Line HepG2 (2014)
Undergraduates: Samuel Resnick, Dr. Jesse Raab
Faculty Advisor: Terry Magnuson
Department: Biology
Mutations in chromatin remodeling complexes are commonly associated with cancer1. More specifically, defects in the SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling family are commonly associated with Hepatocellular Carcinoma, the third most common cancer leading to death1. The SWI/SNF chromatin remodeler family contains two distinct complexes, BAF and PBAF2. These two complexes are differentiated by the ARID domain containing subunit that is present along with core SWI/SNF subunits2. BAF contains ARID1A and PBAF contains ARID22. We set out to understand what happens when levels of ARID1A and ARID2 are lowered by RNAi in Hepatocellular Carcinoma cell line HepG2. Growth assays determined that loss of ARID2 significantly decreases the rate of growth. Coupled with this finding, we also show that expression of other growth regulators are significantly changed when ARID2 and ARID1A are mutated. Immunofluorescence, western blots, and quantitative PCR were employed to validate data from RNA-seq experiments that analyze changes in RNA expression after treatment with siRNA against either ARID1A and ARID2. _x000D_
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References_x000D_
1. Li M. et al. September 2011. Inactivating Mutations of the Chromatin Remodeling Gene ARID2 in Hepatocellular Carcinoma. Nature Genetics. 43:828-29_x000D_
2. Clapier C., Cairns B. 2009. The Biology of Chromatin Remodeling Complexes. Annu. Rev. Biochem. 78:273-304