| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 生物資訊與結構生物研究所 === 95 === Angiogenesis is known to play a critical role in cancer development. When tumor grows larger than 2-3 mm3, cancer mass needs to induce angiogenesis to sustain its nutrition needs. During the angiogenesis process, proliferation and migration of endothelial cells (ECs) are two important steps. In order to understand the transcript regulation governing these critical EC functions, we took the bioinformatic approach to identify genes that are involved in angiogenesis. Serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) is a powerful bioinformatic tool to screen for novel proteins related to ECs growth. Unlike cDNA microarray, SAGE allows in silico analysis of overall gene expression with no need for preexisting sequence information. A novel protein, Placenta Endothelial Protein1 (PEP1) is found highly expressed in vein, was identified by SAGE.
PEP1 comprises of several thrombospondin type-1 (TSP-1) repeats. Since TSP-1 inhibits ECs migration, we hypothesize PEP1 may also involve in regulating similar EC function. Two regions of PEP1 are selected to test whether PEP1 could affect EC migration in vitro. The first one is the C Terminal End (CTE) of PEP1, and the other is an inter-TSP1-domain-sequence (IDS8).
As expected, the CTE and IDS8 of PEP1 promote the migration of Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells (HUVECs) in vitro. In conclusion, our results demonstrate PEP1 is likely to play a role in angiogenesis and further study on the underlying mechanism may provide insight in vascular dysfunction and cancer research.
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