Fig. 2
Effect of metadherin (MTDH) expression in MCF-7 breast cancer cells. a and c Relative MTDH mRNA and protein expression levels after transfection of MCF-7 cells with MTDH plasmid. b and d After transfection with MTDH-short hairpin RNA (MTDH-shRNA) plasmids, the relative MTDH mRNA and protein expression levels were significantly lower than control cells. e Cell growth rate was evaluated by using a Cell Counting Kit-8 assay. Knockdown of MTDH inhibited MCF-7 cell proliferation, while MTDH overexpression induced cell growth. Abbreviation: OD optical density. f Flow cytometric analysis of apoptosis of the MCF-7–MTDH and MCF-7–MTDH–shRNA cells. MTDH overexpression decreased cell apoptosis, while knockdown of MTDH did the opposite. g Overexpression of MTDH arrested cells in S phase, while MTDH silencing increased the proportion of cells in G0/G1 phase. In all of these tests, the MCF-7 and MCF-7-vector cells were used as a reference sample. *P <0.05 and **P <0.01 compared with MCF-7