Transcriptomic Analysis of Pleiotropic Effects of Scandium Chloride on C2C12 Myoblasts

The effects of scandium on skeletal muscle cells remain poorly understood. This study aims to determine whether scandium chloride (ScCl₃) affects C2C12 myoblast proliferation, and the cellular responses were assessed using CCK-8, flow cytometry, RNA-seq, and bioinformatic analyses after treatment with 0.01 mM and 1 mM ScCl₃. We verified that 1 mM ScCl₃ significantly promoted cell proliferation by inducing the G1/S phase transition, while the low concentration had no significant effect. However, GO enrichment analysis failed to capture proliferation-related terms among the top 20 ranked terms. To address this, we grouped genes based on their expression patterns and combined transcription factor activity inference with Hallmark pathway enrichment. This strategy identified distinct functional modules responsive to scandium, involving mitosis, myogenesis, and metabolism, with key regulators including Foxo1, Rela, and myogenic transcription factors. Collectively, our findings suggest that scandium may exert regulatory effects on myoblast proliferation and modulate genes involved in differentiation and metabolism by coordinating multiple functional modules.