Fig. 5

Activin and TGFβ induce epithelial to mesenchymal transition via distinct mitogenic signaling and downregulation of p21. a Both TGFβ and activin treatment induce a decrease of E-Cadherin and an increase in vimentin, indicative of EMT while p21 is downregulated. TGFβ-induced p21 upregulation normalizes over time while activin induced downregulation of p21 persists. ACVR2AsTGFBR2 wild type FET colon cancer cells were treated with activin or TGFβ and lysed after 24 h, 72 h or 1 week, respectively. EMT was determined using E-Cadherin as an epithelial and vimentin as a mesenchymal marker. p21, pERK, pSMAD2 during activin and TGFβ-induced EMT were also interrogated. Phosphorylation of SMAD2 and ERK increased over time after TGFβ treatment. b Inhibition of PI3K following activin and inhibition of MEK following TGFβ treatment leads to a decrease in EMT. FET cells were pretreated with PI3K (LY 290042) or MEK (U0126) prior to stimulation with activin or TGFβ and lysed after one week. EMT was determined using E-Cadherin as an epithelial marker. Representative blots of 3 independent experiments are shown