Wnt signalling and the signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) are oncogenic signalling pathways which are deregulated in colorectal cancer (CRC). Here we investigated the interaction of these two pathways. Firstly, we investigated biochemical interaction by inhibiting STAT3 and β-catenin (through gene knock-down and dominant-negative TCF4 expression) in nine CRC cell lines. ...

The Auxin Binding Protein 1 (ABP1) is one of the most studied proteins in plants. Since decades ago, it has been the prime receptor candidate for the plant hormone auxin with a plethora of described functions in auxin signaling and development. The developmental importance of ABP1 has recently been questioned by identification of Arabidopsis thaliana abp1 knock-out alleles that show no obvious ...

A major goal of personalized anti-cancer therapy is to increase the drug effects while reducing the side effects as much as possible. A novel therapeutic strategy called synthetic lethality (SL) provides a great opportunity to achieve this goal. SL arises if mutations of both genes lead to cell death while mutation of either single gene does not. Hence, the SL partner of a gene mutated only in ...

SMC1 and SMC3 form a high-affinity heterodimer, which provides an open backbone of the cohesin ring, to be closed by a kleisin protein. RNAi mediated knock-down of either one heterodimer partner, SMC1 or SMC3, is expected to cause very similar if not identical phenotypes. However, we observed highly distinct, protein-specific phenotypes. Upon knock-down of human SMC1, much of SMC3 remains stabl...

Lung cancer is the leading cause for cancer-related death, however, the pathogenesis mechanism is poorly understood. Although the rhotekin (RTKN) gene has been reported to encode an effector for the Rho protein that has critical roles in regulating cell growth, the role of RTKN in lung cancer has not been investigated. In clinical lung cancer patient tumor samples, we identified that the RTKN g...

This study investigated the roles of ERK1 and ERK2 in transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1)-induced tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-3 (TIMP-3) expression in rat chondrocytes, and the specific roles of ERK1 and ERK2 in crosstalk with Smad2/3 were investigated to demonstrate the molecular mechanism of ERK1/2 regulation of TGF-β1 signalling. To examine the interaction of specific isoforms ...

A number of transcription factors that act as molecular switches for hematopoietic lineage decisions have been identified. We recently described the ETS transcription factor Spi-B to be exclusively expressed in plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs), but not in myeloid DCs. To assess whether Spi-B is required for pDC development we used an RNA interference knock down approach to specifically silen...

A major goal of personalized anti-cancer therapy is to increase the drug e®ects while reducing the side e®ects as much as possible. A novel therapeutic strategy called synthetic lethality (SL) provides a great opportunity to achieve this goal. SL arises if mutations of both genes lead to cell death while mutation of either single gene does not. Hence, the SL partner of a gene mutated only in ca...