Abstract: Phycocyanin is a natural food colorant used in many food industries in China. It is also a natural functional food protein with good antitumor capacity. In the present study, the high-throughput RNA-seq analysis showed that phycocyanin affected the expression levels of 2 532 genes, including 1 491 up-regulated ones and 1 041 down-regulated ones. GO analysis showed that these differentially expressed genes mainly participated in cell proliferation, apoptosis and cytokine responses. Cluster analysis showed that proliferation-related genes such as Cdk2, Cdc25, PCNA and TLR4 were down-regulated, whilst p27 and p21 were up-regulated after phycocyanin treatment. Meanwhile, apoptosis-related genes such as Bcl-2 and NKD1 were significantly down-regulated, whereas CCT6 and GBP2 were significantly up-regulated. KEGG pathway analysis showed that PI3K-Akt signaling was one of the important pathways through which phycocyanin participated in regulating H460 cells. By revealing the potential mechanism of action of phycocyanin in non-small cell lung cancer H460 cells, the present study may provide a theoretical foundation for the development of targeted therapeutics against non-small cell lung cancer and of functional food factors against tumor cells.

Key words: phycocyanin, non-small cell lung cancer, H460 cells, transcriptomic, cell proliferation, cell apoptosis