Transcriptome Analysis of FEN1 Knockdown HEK293T Cell Strain Reveals Alteration in Nucleic Acid Metabolism, Virus Infection, Cell Morphogenesis and Cancer Development

Aim and Objective: Flap endonuclease-1 (FEN1) plays a central role in DNA replication and DNA damage repair process. In mammals, FEN1 functional sites variation is related to cancer and chronic inflammation, and supports the role of FEN1 as a tumor suppressor. However, FEN1 is overexpressed in multiple types of cancer cells and is associated with drug resistance, supporting its role as an oncogene. Hence, it is vital to explore the multi-functions of FEN1 in normal cell metabolic process. This study was undertaken to examine how the gene expression profile changes when FEN1 is downregulated in 293T cells. Materials and Methods: Using the RNA sequencing and real-time PCR approaches, the transcript expression profile of FEN1 knockdown HEK293T cells have been detected for the next step evaluation, analyzation, and validation. Results: Our results confirmed that FEN1 is important for cell viability. We showed that when FEN1 downregulation led to the interruption of nucleic acids related metabolisms, cell cycle related metabolisms are significantly interrupted. FEN1 may also participate in non-coding RNA processing, ribosome RNA processing, transfer RNA processing, ribosome biogenesis, virus infection and cell morphogenesis. Conclusion: These findings provide insight into how FEN1 nuclease might regulate a wide variety of biological processes, and laid the foundation for understanding the role of other RAD2 family nucleases in cell growth and metabolism.