Fig. 3: l-menthol targets and upregulates HES1 in keratinocytes.

a Immunoblotting of HES1 expression in HaCaT cell lysates with or without l-menthol subjected to pronase digestion. b Immunoblotting of Hes1 expression in mouse primary keratinocyte lysates with or without l-menthol subjected to pronase digestion. c MST analysis of the binding affinity between l-menthol and HES1. d Feature plots of indicated genes in merged scRNA-seq datasets from healthy donors (n = 3) and patients with psoriasis (n = 3). e Representative t-SNE plot of scRNA-seq of epidermal cells derived from healthy donors (n = 3) and patients with psoriasis (n = 3). f Immunohistochemical staining of HES1 in skin sections derived from healthy donors (n = 3) and patients with psoriasis (n = 3). Scale bar, 50 μm. g Immunoblotting of Hes1 expression in epidermis derived from WT mice, IMQ-induced mice, and IMQ-induced mice with 50 μg/day l-menthol treatment. h Immunoblotting (left panel) and quantitation (right panel) of HES1 expression in HaCaT cells with or without 10 μM l-menthol treatment in the presence of 1 μg/ml R848 (n = 4). i Immunoblotting analysis of HES1 expression in HaCaT cells treated with 10 μM l-menthol and 0.5 μM MG132 in the presence of 1 μg/ml R848. The data in (a–c, f–i) are representative of three independent experiments. Statistical analyses were performed by a two-tailed Student’s t-test. All data were presented as mean values ± SEM. Specific p values are indicated in the figure. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.