Fig. 3: Dioxin stimulates SERPINB2 expression in stem cells in vitro and in vivo.

The data from both large-scale DNA microarray and RNA sequencing are presented as a heatmap of differentially expressed genes in non-treated stem cells compared to those treated with dioxin; decreased (green) or increased (red) expression compared to the mean mRNA expression are indicated (a). Among the genes that were analyzed, we observed a positive correlation between dioxin exposure and enhanced SERPINB2 expression in stem cells (b). Western blotting was used to verify enhanced SERPINB2 expression in DNA microarray and RNA sequencing (c). Clinical big data were analyzed using the Seiber dataset (GSE43996 and GSE9452) from ‘R2: Genomics Analysis and Visualization Platform (http://r2.amc.ml)’. The gene datasets were filtered by SERPINB2 expression profiles and the differentiation potency of stem cells (d) or toxicity-related diseases (e). Mice were treated with dioxin (15 µg/kg, intraperitoneally) or vehicle (DMSO), and then stem cells from the adipose tissue of the mice were isolated and expanded as described in the materials and methods section. Real-time PCR and western blotting were performed to confirm the increased SERPINB2 expression in vivo by dioxin exposure (f). β-actin was used as an internal control. The results represent the means ± SD from three independent experiments