Absence of Scaffold Protein Tks4 Disrupts Several Signaling Pathways in Colon Cancer Cells

Tks4 is a large scaffold protein in the EGFR signal transduction pathway that is involved in several cellular processes, such as cellular motility, reactive oxygen species-dependent processes, and embryonic development. It is also implicated in a rare developmental disorder, Frank–ter Haar syndrome. Loss of Tks4 resulted in the induction of an EMT-like process, with increased motility and overexpression of EMT markers in colorectal carcinoma cells. In this work, we explored the broader effects of deletion of Tks4 on the gene expression pattern of HCT116 colorectal carcinoma cells by transcriptome sequencing of wild-type and Tks4 knockout (KO) cells. We identified several protein coding genes with altered mRNA levels in the Tks4 KO cell line, as well as a set of long non-coding RNAs, and confirmed these changes with quantitative PCR on a selected set of genes. Our results show a significant perturbation of gene expression upon the deletion of Tks4, suggesting the involvement of different signal transduction pathways over the well-known EGFR signaling.