ZEB1 is neither sufficient nor required for epithelial-mesenchymal transition in LS174T colorectal cancer cells
Jägle S, Dertmann A, Schrempp M, Hecht A.
Biochem Biophys Res Commun. online article
The two transcription factors SNAIL1 and ZEB1 are thought to be master regulators of EMT and to form a core regulatory network required for EMT-associated transcriptional reprogramming. Here we investigated whether ZEB1 is an obligatory downstream mediator of Snail1-induced EMT, and whether ZEB1 could elicit EMT in a background of naïve epithelial cells independently of SNAIL1. However, CRISPR/Cas9-mediated knockout of ZEB1 did not affect the ability of ectopically expressed SNAIL1 to induce a complete EMT in ZEB1-deficient LS174T cells. Likewise, ectopic ZEB1 had only minor effects on cell morphology and invasive growth in three-dimensional spheroid cultures. In agreement with this, expression of ZEB1 did not lead to repression of epithelial marker genes, and mesenchymal markers were not upregulated by ZEB1. We conclude that ZEB1 is neither required nor sufficient for EMT in LS174T colorectal cancer cells.
