Jin, Z., Lahat, G., Korchin, B., Nguyen, T., Zhu, Q.S., Wang, X., Lazar, A.J., Trent, J., Pollock, R.E. and Lev D.
Notes: Increased expression of midkine (MK), a growth factor normally involved in neural development, is associated with several human malignancies. The authors used quantitative RT-PCR to examine mRNA levels for MK and MK receptors in various soft-tissue sarcoma (STS) cell lines. Reverse transcription was performed using 1µg of total RNA, and 2µl of cDNA was used in qPCR using the PCR Master Mix, primers specific to MK and either glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate or β-actin primers for normalization, and EvaGreen® dye. To examine the protumorigenic effects of MK, the authors incubated HT1080 and SW684 STS cell lines, which express low levels of MK, with human recombinant MK and measured cell proliferation using the CellTiter 96® AQueous Non-Radioactive Cell Proliferation Assay. In addition, the authors examined cell proliferation in MK-stably transfected HT1080 cells. The plasmid used for stable transfections was created by reverse transcribing the MK-coding region using the ImProm-II™ Reverse Transcription System, then cloning the resulting cDNA into an expression vector. (3895)