Different gene expression profiles of AD293 and HEK293 cell lines that show contrasting susceptibility to apoptosis induced by overexpression of Bim L.

Bim is a pro-apoptotic member of the Bcl-2 protein family. Overexpression of Bim proved to be highly cytotoxic for diverse cells. The AD293 cell line is derived directly from the HEK293 cell line but has been transfected with a gene that can improve cell adherence. We found that there was almost no apoptosis seen in Bim L-transfected AD293 cells, but more than half of Bim L-transfected HEK293 cells underwent apoptosis. Suppression subtractive hybridization was used to detect the different gene expression profile between these two cell lines. In 192 sequenced positive clones, there were 30 clones repeating twice or more. Ten genes were selected for identification by semi-quantitative RT-PCR. The transcripts of two adhesion-related genes (actin and parvin) and two apoptosis-related genes (cyclin 2 and protein phosphatase 1G) were up-regulated in AD293 cells. These results suggest that the high expression of cell adhesion-related proteins might be responsible for the different apoptosis status after the transfection of Bim L. Our data provide candidate genes responsible for the different apoptosis sensitivity of these two cell lines. Further investigation on the differential expression profile between AD293 and HEK293 might improve our understanding of cell apoptosis mechanism.