AbstractsEarth & Environmental Science

Both Notch and the Wnt pathways are key regulators in maintaining the homeostasis in the intestine. Defects on the key tumor suppressor adenomatous polyposis coli, APC a gene in the Wnt pathway is most frequently mutated in colorectal cancer. Previous studies have indicated that there is a crosstalk between these two pathways. We investigate if there is correlation by first using bioinformatics to find Lef1/Tcf sites in several of the Notch pathway gene promoters. Bioinformatically we found that a lot of the genes contained theses sites controlled by the APC's destruction target β-catenin. By using semi quantitative PCR and western blot we found that Hes 1, Hes 7, JAG 2, MAML 1, Notch 2, NUMB, NUMBL, RFNG and LFNG was downregulated in HT29 colon cancer cells carrying a vector containing wild type APC. All but JAG 2 contains at least one Lef1/Tcf site in their promoter region. The results were verified in HT29 cells transfected with siRNA against β-catenin. We also investigated what would happen to the Lef1/Tcf target gene program of the Wnt pathway, if the Notch pathway was inhibited with the gamma-secretase inhibitor DAPT. Results showed no downregulution of β-catenin or its target gene Cyclin D1.Taken together, these results demonstrate that the Wnt pathway can be placed upstream of the Notch pathway and regulates the latter through β-catenin and the Lef1/Tcf target gene program. However, preliminary results indicate that there is no regulation of APC/β-catenin by the Notch pathway.