Cell Line Culturing and Transfection

The SK-Hep1, Hep3B, Huh-7, HepG2 and SNU449 cell lines were obtained from the Korean Cell Line Bank (Korea). SH-J1 cells were provided by Dr. Dae-Ghon Kim (Medical School, Chonbuk National University) (Kim et al., 2002 (link)). HEK293FT and THLE-2 cells were purchased from Invitrogen and American Type Culture Collection (USA), respectively. HEK293FT and liver cancer cells were cultured at 37°C under 5% CO₂ in DMEM supplemented with 10% FBS, 100 units/ml of penicillin and 100 μg/ml streptomycin. THLE-2 cells originated from human primary normal liver cells were plated on culture plates pre-coated with a solution containing 0.01 mg/ml fibronectin, 0.03 mg/ml bovine collagen type I and 0.01 mg/ml bovine serum albumin dissolved in Bronchial Epithelium Basal Medium (BEBM, Lonza). THLE-2 cells were cultured at 37°C under 5% CO2 in BEBM supplemented with Bronchial Epithelium Cell Growth Medium (BEGM) SingleQuots (Lonza). Lipofectamine 2000 (Invitrogen) was used to transfect expression vectors into cells. The same control, VRK1, VRK3 and p53 expression vectors were used as described previously (Kang and Kim, 2006 (link); Kang et al., 2008 (link); Lee et al., 2015b (link)).