Molecular changes in appearance of a cancer cell among normal HEK293T cells

In very early stages of cancer development, one or a few cells expressing cancer-associated genes appear among a much larger number of surrounding normal cells. To analyze the molecular changes induced by this co-existence, we artificially prepared transformed cells with complete loss of tumor suppressor gene, SCRIB, among normal human embryonic kidney (HEK293T) cells. A cell strain with SCRIB-knockout was successfully constructed by using Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)-Cas9 nuclease system and co-cultured with normal cells. By measuring the time-course changes in cell numbers when SCIRB-knockout cells (cancer model) or cells with normal level of SCRIB expression were respectively co-cultured with wild-type normal HEK293T cells, it was shown that the SCRIB-knockout strain was beneficial for proliferation when mixed together with normal cells. Moreover, as a result of proteome analysis on wild-type cells separated from co-culture with SCRIB-knockout cells, a total of 843 proteins were identified, among which 139 proteins were specific. Among the specifically identified proteins, 22 proteins were annotated to be involved in cytoskeletons including microtubule motor activity-associated proteins. It was implied that molecular changes in cytoskeletons occurred in normal cells when co-cultured with SCRIB knockout cells, but the SCRIB knockout might affect proliferation of the transformed cells with SCRIB knockout by defensive or offensive mechanism of surrounding normal cells.