Figure 4: Contribution of calcium-dependent signalling pathway activation, TNNC1 overexpression and F-actin cytoskeleton reorganization to MFAP5-stimulated ovarian cancer cell motility.

(a) Heat map of motility-promoting genes associated with calcium signalling whose expression was upregulated in MFAP5-treated OVCA432 cells. (b) Interacting network of motility-promoting and calcium signalling-related genes whose expression was upregulated at least 1.5-fold in MFAP5-treated OVCA432 cells created using the Ingenuity Pathway Analysis software programme (Ingenuity Systems, Redwood City, CA, USA). (c) Upregulation of TNNC1 mRNA expression in five serous ovarian cancer cell lines after MFAP5 treatment (mean±s.d. of three independent experiments; P<0.001; two-tailed Student’s t-test). (d) Abrogation of MFAP5’s stimulatory effect on ovarian cancer cell motility by knockdown of TNNC1 expression using TNNC1-targeting siRNAs and a scrambled nontargeting siRNA as control (mean±s.d. of three independent experiments; two-tailed Student’s t-test). (e) MFAP5-induced F-actin rearrangement and activated stress fibre formation in A224 and ALST cells; bar=10 μm.