Fig. 8
The expression of PSTN regulated by TGFβ-Smad2/3 signaling pathway. r-TGFβ, TGFβ recombinant protein, and SM16 are agonists and inhibitors of the TGFβ-Smad2/3 signaling pathway, respectively. A depicts a schematic of the TGFβ- Smad2/3 signaling pathway's regulatory effect on POSTN expression. B showed that the expression of TGFβ downstream genes Smad2 mRNA, Smad3 mRNA, Smad4 mRNA and Postn mRNA were significantly decreased in the SM16 group (P < 0.05), and the expression trend was opposite in the r-TGFβ group (P < 0.05), while there was no significant difference between the r-TGFβ combined with SM16 group and the control group. The results in Fig C and D suggest that these TGFβ downstream protein expression trends are similar to the results of qPCR. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.001