Research Paper Volume 11, Issue 22 pp 10597—10609

Figure 1. Uric acid (UA) induced epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and serum response factor (SRF) expression upregulation in NRK-52E cells. (A) Western blot analysis showing that UA (15 mg/dL) mediated the upregulation of phosphorylated SRF (pSRF), SRF, α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), and Fibroblast specific protein-1 (FSP-1) expression and the downregulation of E-cadherin expression in a time-dependent manner. (C) Western blot analysis showing that UA mediated the upregulation of pSRF, SRF, α-SMA, and FSP-1 expression and the downregulation of E-cadherin expression in a dose-dependent manner at 48 h. (B, D) Quantitative determination of relative SRF levels. (E–G) Quantitative RT-PCR analysis of SRF, ZO-1 and fibronectin (FN) mRNA expression. (H) Immunofluorescence staining for SRF at an original magnification of 400×. *P<0.05 versus the control group. All experiments were repeated three times.