Fig. 2.

The presence of brachyury decreases glioma cell migration and invasiveness through a mesenchymal-epithelial transition phenotype. Brachyury (pcBrachy) inhibited glioma cell migration (a) and invasion (b) compared with that of the negative cell line control (4/T0). (c) Brachyury decreases the adhesion capacity of glioma cells to laminin. (d) Fluorescence microscopic staining of tubulin (green) and F-actin (red) and counterstaining with DAPI to visualize the nuclei (blue). Cells without brachyury (4/T0) present a more undifferentiated phenotype and redistribution of F-actin filaments to lamellipodium- and filopodia-like structures. Overexpression of brachyury (pcBrachy) changes the phenotype of glioma cells to a more cohesive-like phenotype. (e) Expression levels of epithelial markers (E-cadherin or CDH1) as well as mesenchymal markers (N-cadherin or CDH2, SNAIL, SLUG, VIM, FN1, NANOG, and JUP) were examined by qRT-PCR. The same genes were also analyzed in (f) human glioma samples by in silico analysis (TCGA, n = 681 gliomas) using the Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) program. In vitro data are presented as the means ± S.E.M. of at least three independent experiments. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001