EVALUATION OF ELTD1 GENE EXPRESSION IN MELATONIN-TREATED HT29 CANCER CELLS: AN EXPERIMENTAL BIOINFORMATICS STUDY

Colorectal cancer after lung and breast cancer is the most common cause of death. The ELTD1 gene encodes a G-protein-binding protein that acts as a growth factor receptor and plays a role in normal angiogenesis as well as in cancer cells. The aim of this study was to evaluate the ELTD1 gene expression in melatonin treated HT29 cancer cells using bioinformatics and experimental approaches.

First, microarray data were provided from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and then they were analyzed using Probabilistic neural networks (PNN) in MATLAB 2018a software as a bioinformatics tool. The cytotoxicity of melatonin was assessed by MTT assay. Subsequently, Q-RT-PCR was employed to evaluate the rate of ELTD1 gene expression in HT29 cells treated with melatonin.

The bioinformatics analysis indicated that ELTD1 expression level considerably decreased in cells exposed to melatonin in comparison to control group. MTT assay demonstrated that melatonin reduced HT29 cell viability in a concentration and time-dependent manner and the IC50 values of melatonin were calculated to be 160 µM in 48h. In addition, analyzing Q-RT-PCR indicated that melatonin significantly decreased ELTD1 expression level which is supported by bioinformatics analysis results.

The results indicated that ELTD1 gene can be used as a target gene for melatonin in colorectal cancer therapy. However, more study is needed to prove our results