Fig. 5.

The overexpression or knockdown of Hath6 in endothelial cells affects the endothelial phenotypes. (A) The overexpression or knockdown of Hath6 in HUVECs results in the upregulation or downregulation, respectively, of some endothelial-related genes, including CD31, KDR, eNOS, vWF and VE-cadherin (GAPDH was used as the loading control). (B) The angiogenesis assay indicates that siHath6-HUVECs cannot form tube-like structures on Matrigel compared to the control group. Scale bars: 100 µm. (C) RT-PCR analysis showed the overexpression and knockdown of Hath6 in genetically modified ECV-304 cells (*P = 0.018, **P = 0.0076, n = 9). The expression of each tested gene was normalized to its expression in the vector-transfected control cells and mock-transfected control cells. (D) The angiogenesis assay revealed the influence of Hath6 overexpression and Hath6 knockdown on the formation of tube-like structures on Matrigel. Scale bars: 200 µm. The siHath6-endothelial cells exhibit serious impairment of their tube-formation ability (*P = 0.014, n = 9), whereas Hath6 overexpression has no significant effect. An image from a representative experiment is shown on the left. The quantification of the average number of tubes per field of view at 48 h is shown on the right. (E) The proliferation of Hath6-endothelial cells and shHath6-endothelial cells was detected by CCK8 (at 96 h, **P = 0.0049 in the left graph and **P = 6.3E−07 in the right graph, n = 8). Hath6 overexpression impairs endothelial cell proliferation, and its knockdown promotes proliferation. (F) The effect of Hath6 overexpression or knockdown on endothelial cell migration. The dashed lines indicate the width of a ‘wound’. The upper panels show one representative experiment. The percent wound closure is shown as the mean±s.e.m. in the lower panel (n = 4, scale bars: 200 µm). No significant difference was detected between the experimental groups 48 h after wound formation.