Fig. 4

ZNF146 competed with circPIP5K1A for binding with miR-376c-3p. a Venn diagram showed the overlapping of four databases (microT, PITA, PicTar and TargetScan), and thus ZNF146 and PTBP2 were discovered to be the candidate target gene of miR-376c-3p. b The expression of ZNF146 in GC cell lines and normal GES-1 cells was examined by RT-qPCR. c The expression of ZNF146 in transfected cells was detected by RT-qPCR. d ZNF146 was predicted to have a binding site for miR-376c-3p from starBase and then luciferase reporter assays were conducted to verify the correlation among circPIP5K1A, miR-376c-3p and ZNF146. e RIP assay validated the co-harvest of circPIP5K1A, miR-376c-3p and ZNF146 in RISCs in both MKN-45 and HGC-27 cells. f The expression of ZNF146 was detected by RT-qPCR in MKN-45 and HGC-27 cells transfected with sh-circPIP5K1A#1 or sh-NC. g The knockdown efficiency of ZNF146 in MKN-45 and HGC-27 cells was detected by RT-qPCR. h Colony formation and EdU analyses were applied to measure the proliferative ability of transfected cells. i Transwell assay analyzed the capability of cell migration and invasion in transfected cells. j TUNEL and flow cytometry analyses were used to examine the apoptosis rate of transfected cells. ^*P < 0.05, ^**P < 0.01, ^***P < 0.001