Figure 1

miRNA-146a and miRNA-146b-5p increase after P.g LPS stimulation in HGFs. (A) The fold change of the miRNAs from the miRNA microarray is shown in the schematic diagram. After the HGFs were cultured in the presence or absence of 1 μg/ml of P.g LPS for 24 hours, total RNA was collected and used for the miRNA array. The fold change is calculated by dividing the LPS-stimulated samples by the LPS unstimulated normalized samples. The left red bars show the up-regulated miRNAs, and the right blue bars show the down-regulated miRNAs. The colour difference shows the fold change (up-regulation: from 5.0 to 1.0; down-regulation: from 1.0 to 4.0). (B) The expression levels of miRNA-146a and miRNA-146b-5p in the pooled RNA samples using real-time PCR. The relative expression levels are presented as the fold change between the LPS-stimulated (24 hour stimulation with 1 μg/ml of P.g LPS) and unstimulated HGFs. Black bars refer to microarray results, and grey bars refer to the real-time quantitative RT-PCR results. (C) The expression levels of miRNA-146a and miRNA-146b-5p in 5 individual RNA samples using real-time PCR. The relative levels are presented as the fold change between the LPS-stimulated and unstimulated HGFs. The short transverse lines indicate the average values. **: p < 0.01.