To investigate the effects of dynein axonemal light intermediate chain 1 (DNALI1) on proliferation, invasion, migration and apoptosis of CNE-2z cells in a hypoxic environment.

Three data sets about nasopharyngeal carcinoma tissues in Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database were analyzed to find differential expressedgenes (DEGs) through R language software. Hypoxia is the characteristic of tumor microenvironment. This study was carried out in a hypoxia work station (1﹪O₂) to simulate the hypoxic microenvironment in vivo. Stable overexpressed DNALI1CNE-2z cells were established by infecting with lentivirus packaged with DNALI1 overexpressed plasmid. CNE-2z cells were cultured normally (blank control, BC) , infected with empty vector virus (negative control, NC) and DNALI1 overexpression vector virus (DNALI1-OE) respectively, and then exposed to hypoxic environment (1﹪O₂) . The mRNA and protein expression levels of DNALI1 gene were detected by real-time fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) and Western blot. The proliferation of CNE-2z cells was measured by colony formation assay. Transwell assay was used to detect the migration and invasion of CNE-2z cells. The apoptotic cells of CNE-2z cells were detected by flow cytometry. One-way ANOVA was used for comparison among multiple groups. LSD-t test was used for pairwise comparison between groups. P values of less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant.

Through bioinformatics analysis, it was found that the expression of DNALI1 was downregulated in nasopharyngeal carcinoma compared with normal nasopharyngeal tissue. After DNALI1 overexpression, the proliferation ability and apoptotic cells of CNE-2z cells remained unchanged in the hypoxic environment compared with BC and NC groups (all P > 0.05) . However, compared with BC group and NC group, the cell migration ability (198.67±3.22) , (199.00±3.00) vs (75.00±7.55) and invasion ability (240.67±16.01) , (259.67±3.06) vs (83.33±9.50) were significantly inhibited in DNALI1-OE group (all P < 0.001) .

DNALI1 overexpression inhibits the invasion and migration of CNE-2z cells in hypoxic environment, but has no effect on proliferation and apoptosis of CNE-2z cells.