Figure 3.

Ectopic expression of MDIG promotes HCC cell proliferation and tumorigenicity in vitro and in vivo. (a,b) MDIG mRNA (a) and its protein (b) level were detected, respectively, by qRT-PCR and by western blot in MHCC-LM3, MHCC-97L and SK-Hep1 cells after MDIG forced expression with lentiviral vector (pWPXL) in vitro. (c) Ectopic expression of MDIG promotes the proliferation of HCC cells by MTT assay. (d) MDIG promotes the colony formation ability of HCC cells, and bar graphs showed their quantitative analysis data. (e) Liver and lung tissues from the animals with tumour xenografts inoculated with MHCC-LM3 cell line stably expressing MDIG, and bar graphs showed their quantitative analysis of the liver weights. (f) MDIG protein level was detected by western blot in xenografts. The graph of (a), (c), (d) and (e) are shown as mean±s.d. of n=3 independent experiments. Unpaired Student’s t-tests were used for statistical analysis (*P<0.05, **P<0.01, ***P<0.001)