Fig. 5: The effects of carcinogen exposure on mitosis.

A A schematic outlining the experiment design. B Representative live cell microscopy images illustrating examples of a normal mitosis and an abnormal mitosis leading to a binucleation event. The scale bar represents 10 µm and the scale is consistent across all images. C A box plot displaying the proliferation rate of lung epithelial cells co-cultured with alveolar macrophages after exposure to various carcinogens. The p value for the comparison between the control sample and NanoclayBent is 0.01. D A box plot displaying the proliferation rate of lung epithelial cells co-cultured with alveolar macrophages after exposure to various carcinogens. For the boxplots in (C) and (D), the center represents the median values, the whiskers define the minimum and maximum values, and bounds of the box reflect the 25th and 75th percentiles of values obtained for each compound. Statistical testing for each carcinogen exposure [DieselN1650 (n = 3), DieselN3 (n = 4), ExhaustN1 (n = 4), Printex90 (n = 4), GON059 (n = 4), MWCNT401 (n = 4), MWCNTN006 (n = 5), HNTNN (n = 4), NanoclayBent (n = 3), Fe₂O₃N018 (n = 3), SiO₂14 (n = 3), TiO₂nt (n = 3), all biological replicates] was performed via pairwise two-tailed t-tests to reference control (n = 8, biological replicates). The p-value for the comparison between the control sample and DieselN1650 is 0.027, between the control sample and DieselN3 is 0.027, between the control sample and ExhaustN1 is 0.009, between the control sample and Printex90 is 0.003 and between the control sample and HNTNN is 0.038. E A volcano plot showing the mutagen class attributed proportions associated with self-reported racial group. Difference in the proportion of mutagen-attributed mutations between self-reported Black and white racial groups were tested by two-tailed Student’s t tests followed by Benjamini-Hochberg correction¹³⁵. Red points indicate q-value < 0.05. F A table displaying proportions mutagen-attributed mutations by mutagen signature classes between self-reported Black and white patients. Difference in proportion of mutagen-attributed mutations between self-reported Black and white racial groups were tested by two-tailed Welch’s t-tests followed by Benjamini-Hochberg correction¹³⁵. Acronyms: polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), reactive oxygen species (ROS), nitric oxide species (NOS). Mutagen class names are maintained from ref. ⁹⁶. such that Control refers to mutations observed in untreated controls, Other refers to mutations from mutagens that did not fit into any specific mutagen class of interest, and Unassigned refers to mutations not corresponding to any mutagen classes including Control. The bolded numbers indicate q-values below 0.05. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. Statistical significance: NS p ≥ 0.05, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001, **** p < 0.0001. Figure 5A was created with BioRender.com released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en).