ABSTRACT: Wnt signaling plays a pivotal role in colorectal cancer. Intrinsic activation of Wnt by mutational events, such as mutations in the tumor suppressor gene APC, represents the most frequent initiating event in this disease background. Long truncated versions of APC retain partial functionality, which leads to a sub-maximal, “just right” activation state of Wnt signaling supposed to be beneficial for disease initiation. In order to study the transcriptomic alterations of an over-stimulated Wnt signaling pathway, conditional shRNA-mediated silencing of APC was performed in chromosomal instable HT-29 CRC cells which express a 1555 amino acid variant of APC protein able to bind and partially inactivate β-catenin. To achieve this, cells were stably transduced with lentiviral particles encoding for a doxycyline-inducible shRNA directed against APC, or, as a control, a non-silencing shRNA (pTRIPZ inducible shRNA vectors, RHS4740-EG324, Horizon Dharmacon, CO, USA). 72 hours after APC silencing, total RNA was isolated and quality controlled for subsequent RNA-Seq Analysis (DKFZ Heidelberg, Genomic and Proteomic Core Facility) on a HiSeq 2000 instrument (Illumina). Overall, we observed bona-fide Wnt target genes, such as NKD1, AXIN2, PTK7, ASCL2, and SMOC2, and additional putative direct or indirect targets of Wnt signaling up-regulated upon shRNA-mediated APC silencing.
