Fig. 4

miR-186 in EVs directly targets SOX4 in the fibroblasts. a The volcanic map of differentially expressed genes in PF obtained by differential analysis of microarray GSE35145 (red: the upregulated genes; green: the downregulated genes) obtained from GEO database (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gds). b Venn maps of differentially expressed genes obtained from microarray GSE35145, miR-186 downstream genes predicted by StarBase (http://starbase.sysu.edu.cn/), and human transcription factors in Cistrome (http://cistrome.org) (the intersection gene: SOX4). c, d SOX4 expression in clinical lung tissues of patients with IPF (n = 48) and control donors (n = 16) measured by RT-qPCR and Western blot analysis. e The binding sites between miR-186 and SOX4 3′UTR predicted by StarBase. f The relationship between miR-186 and SOX4 verified by dual-luciferase reporter gene assay. g, h SOX4 mRNA (g) and protein (h) expression in the fibroblasts transfected with miR-186 mimic measured by RT-qPCR and western blot analysis. i, j The expression of miR-186 and SOX4 mRNA (i) and protein (j) expression measured by RT-qPCR and Western blot analysis after fibroblasts were transfected with miR-186 inhibitor and treated with BMSC-EVs. *p < 0.05 vs. the fibroblasts transfected with inhibitor-NC; ^#p < 0.05 vs. the fibroblasts treated with miR-186 inhibitor and PBS. Differences between two groups were compared by unpaired t test, while differences among groups were determined by one-way ANOVA. The experiment was repeated three times