Figure 6. RNA-RNA interaction of non-coding Axin2 UTRs in colorectal cancer cells and clinical data set. (A) Immunoblot analysis of Axin2, nuclear GSK-3 and Snail levels was performed following transfection of the firefly luciferase expression vectors without UTR (mock) or having UTR in HCT116 (left panels) and DicerEX5 (right panels) cells. (B) The relative expression levels of mature miR-34a were determined by TaqMan quantitative RT-PCR after transfection in HCT116 cells of the firefly luciferase expression vectors without UTR (mock) or having UTR (*p < 0.01 compared with control, t-test). (C) Comparison of miR-34 target genes of LEF1, LRP6 and WNT3 transcript levels between two subsets of AXIN2 in 177 cases of colorectal cancer patient samples (GSE17536). (D) Pearson correlation scatter plots of AXIN2 ceRNA transcripts in GSE17536. The p values for correlation coefficients of LEF1, LRP6 and WNT3 were 4.79e-05, 2.97e-08 and 1.97e-02, respectively. See the “Materials and Methods” section for data processing and statistical analysis.