Figure 9

Overexpression of WNK1 in HUVEC cells significantly increases the migration of HepG2 cells. (a) The protein levels of WNK1 were examined by Western blot. (b) Quantification of Western blot indicates that overexpression of WNK1 in HUVEC cells significantly increases the WNK1 protein levels. (c) HUVEC cells with WNK1 overexpression were seeded in the lower chamber while HepG2 hepatoma cells were loaded in the upper chamber of the transwell plate. (d) Representative images of hepatoma cell migration. The scale bar is 200 µm in length. (e) Quantified data of the transwell migration assay shows that WNK1 overexpression in HUVEC cells significantly increases the migrated HepG2 cells, indicating that WNK1 plays an important role in endothelial cells for stimulating hepatoma cell migration. We performed three replicates for each Western blot and transwell analysis. Unpaired Student’s t-test (two tailed test) was used for statistical analysis. *: p ≦ 0.05; **: p ≦ 0.01.