Fig. 4.

Expression of critical transcription factors of EMT in SNX27-KD and WT MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells. a Western blots showed the protein expression of β-catenin and E-cadherin was significantly increased after SNX27 knockdown, whereas the expression of Vimentin and Claudin-5 were significantly reduced. However, there is no significantly difference of some other cell proliferation markers, like c-Myc, between KD and WT cells. Data are analyzed with Welch’s t-test, and expressed with mean ± SD from three independent experiments (n = 3). *p < 0.05 vs. WT control; NS: no significantly difference vs. WT control. b SNX27-KD and WT MDA-MB-231 cells were immunostained with β-catenin, E-cadherin, and Vimentin, respectively. Knockdown of SNX27 led to enhanced β-catenin in cell membrane, which is involved in extracellular matrix formation with E-cadherin. The confocal imaging also confirmed that Vimentin is expressed at extremely low levels after SNX27 knockdown (Scale bar is 20 μm). Duplicate samples were included in three independent experiments (n = 3)