Sestrin2 Overexpression Ameliorates Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress-Induced Apoptosis via Inhibiting mTOR Pathway in HepG2 Cells

Figure 5

The expression level of Sestrin2 was negatively correlated with that of apoptotic-related markers in HepG2 cells. This graphic plotted the rank correlation between the relative protein levels of Sestrin2 and (a) Bax/Bcl2 (ρ = −0.739, ), (b) C-caspase12/Caspase12 (ρ = −0.453, ), (c) C-caspase3/Caspase3 (ρ = −0.511, ) and (d) CytoC (ρ = −0.725, ) in HepG2 cells in which the gene expression of Sestrin2 was manipulated to be either upregulated or down-regulated by plasmid transfection. Spearman’s two-tailed correlation analysis was used to compare the fold change data obtained from Western Blot densitometry analysis of indicated proteins. On the subplot, each point represents an individual sample of HepG2 cell culture (n = 48 from 5 independent experiments), and no outlier was excluded from this study. The solid line is the best fit through the data, with the respective Spearman’s correlation coefficient displayed as rs.

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