Fig. 1: Concomitant loss of ERβ and PML gene expression and both share a strong positive correlation in human breast tissue samples.

a (i) Representative IHC images of the candidate proteins along with respective H&E staining in human BCa and adjacent normal breast tissue samples and (ii) IHC images of ERβ and PML in two representative TNBC samples (Samples 1 and 2). All images are taken at ×200 magnification. b Scatter-plot representation of the mean H-scores of ERβ and PML in (i) adjacent normal breast (n = 24), (ii) breast carcinoma (ER⁺) (n = 35) and (iii) TNBC (n = 19) tissues. c Depiction of correlation coefficient (r_s) between mean H-scores of ERβ and PML estimated from IHC images of both normal breast and BCa tissues combined. d Box-plots depicting distribution of H-scores of ERβ and PML, in normal breast, BCa and TNBC samples. e Comparison of combined average H-scores of ERβ and PML. f Graphical representation of mean ranks of the observed individual H-scores of ERβ and PML as obtained through calculations from M–W U-test (left). Table displaying the calculated Mann–Whitney U-test values for the H-scores of each observed protein is on the right. g Heat map of expression patterns of 8 genes from 24 normal (N) and 43 BCa (C) samples that includes 8 TNBC (T) samples, as obtained from qRT-PCR data (w.r.t GAPDH), displayed on a scale from green (low) to red (high). h Box-plots depicting relative gene expression of ERβ and PML (w.r.t GAPDH) in normal breast and BCa samples. i Depiction of correlation coefficient (r_s) between mean relative expressions of ERβ and PML genes as quantified from qRT-PCR data of both normal breast and BCa tissues combined. The error bars represent the mean (±) s.d. of independent two-tailed Student’s t-tests, where P < 0.0001 is represented as **** for highly significant