Fig. 5

Sufu positively regulates TNFα-induced inflammatory gene expression in AdSPC-derived iSMCs. a–d Inflammatory gene expression in iSMCs was positively modulated by Sufu. AdSPCs were infected with non-target (sh-NT) or Sufu (sh-Sufu) shRNA lentivirus (a, c), or control (pCDH) or Sufu over-expressing (pCDH-Sufu) vector (b, d), followed by iSMC differentiation for 4 days. Total RNAs and conditioned culture medium were harvested and subjected to RT-PCR (a, b) and ELISA (c, d) analyses, respectively. e, f Luciferase activity assays. AdSPCs infected with sh-NT or sh-Sufu (e), or pCDH or pCDH-Sufu (f) were transfected with IL-6 (pmIL-6 FL) or MCP-1/CCL2 (pMCP-Luc) gene promoter reporters as indicated in the figures, followed by iSMC differentiation. Two days later, total cell lysates were harvested and subjected to luciferase activity assays. The data presented here are mean ± S.E.M. of five (n = 5 in a, b, e and f) or six (n = 6 in c and d) independent experiments. *P < 0.05 (vs sh-NT or pCDH, unpaired t test)