Hypoxia Enhances Activity and Malignant Behaviors of Colorectal Cancer Cells through the STAT3/MicroRNA-19a/PTEN/PI3K/AKT Axis

Figure 5

miR-19a directly targets PTEN mRNA in the hypoxia-exposed CRC cells: (a) a Venn diagram for the intersections of target mRNAs of miR-19a predicted using three bioinformatic systems and the mRNAs enriched in the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway; (b) expression of six candidate mRNAs in cells overexpressing miR-19a examined by RT-qPCR (, two-way ANOVA); (c) binding relationship between miR-19a and PTEN mRNA validated using a luciferase assay (, two-way ANOVA); (d) PTEN expression in the collected CRC tumor tissues and the adjacent tissues detected by RT-qPCR (, paired -test); (e) PTEN expression in cells cultured under hypoxic conditions examined by RT-qPCR (, two-way ANOVA); (f) negative correlations between PTEN and STAT3/miR-19a in the CRC tissues (, Pearson’s correlation analysis); (g) miR-19a and PTEN mRNA expression in cells after miR-19a mimic and PTEN-OE transfections examined by RT-qPCR (, two-way ANOVA); (h) phosphorylation of PI3K and AKT in cells detected by the western blot analysis (, two-way ANOVA). Data were presented as the from three independent experiments.

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