Bioinformatics analysis and biological experiments support an emerging role of ELK3 in glioma

IntroductionGlioma is a malignant tumor that recurs easily. This study aimed at investigating the biological effect of ELK3 in epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and its prognostic value.Material and methodsBioinformatics analyses were performed to determine the expression and prognostic value of ELK3. The biological properties of glioma cells (A172 and LN229) were evaluated by cell counting kit-8, plate cloning and transwell assays. Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) website was used to analyze the relationship between ELK3 expression and EMT-related markers. Western blotting was applied to detect the protein levels.ResultsELK3 is highly expressed in glioma and significantly associated with poor prognosis (p < 0.05), presenting promising value in the diagnosis and prognostic prediction of glioma. Further biological assays revealed that cell viability was notably reduced after down-regulating ELK3 (p < 0.01). The numbers of colonies formed by A172 (145.30 ± 12.86 vs. 300.30 ± 11.68) and LN229 (125.70 ± 4.04 vs. 256.00 ± 20.07) cells were decreased after transfection of si-ELK3 (p < 0.01). The numbers of invaded and migrated glioma cells in si-ELK3 group were decreased by about half (p < 0.01). Moreover, ELK3 was positively correlated with N-Cadherin (R = 0.21), Snail1 (R = 0.43), Slug (R = 0.6) and Vimentin (R = 0.35), and depletion of ELK3 reduced the levels of these EMT-related markers more than a half (p < 0.01).ConclusionsOur observations illustrated that ELK3 was highly expressed in glioma and played a promoting role in the growth and mobility of glioma cells partly by modulating EMT progress.