Fig. 4

CircWHSC1 sponges miR-1182 and miR-145, and regulates expression of TERT and MUC1. The complementary sequences of complementary sequences with miR-1182 and miR-145 on circWHSC1 were predicted (a). Dual-luciferase reporter assay showed that both miR-1182 and miR-145 could significantly reduce the relative luciferase activity of the wild-type of circWHSC1 luciferase plamid compared with the mutant-type (b). RNA pull-down assay with a probe against circWHSC1 was used for qPCR analysis, which demonstrated an enrichment of circWHSC1 (left) and miR-1182 (medium) and miR-145 (right) in OVCAR3 and CAOV3 (c). Western blot showed that overexpression of circWHSC1 increased the expression levels of TERT and MUC1. Down-regulation of circWHSC1 yielded the opposite effects in OVCAR3 (d). TERT and MUC1 were also up-regulated in circWHSC1-overexpression xenograft (e). The results are representative of three separate experiments; data are expressed as mean ± SD.* indicates P < 0.05