Journal: bioRxiv
Article Title: EPHB2 promotes diet-induced MASH liver fibrosis
doi: 10.1101/2025.11.19.688968
Figure Lengend Snippet: (A) Dot plot showing Ephb2 gene expression across different hepatic cell types in mouse snRNA-seq analyzed from published dataset GSE212837. (B) Representative immunofluorescence images of human liver sections of healthy and MASH patients stained with antibodies against phosphoEphB2 (Red) and αSMA (green), DAPI counterstain for nuclei is shown in blue. (C) Messenger RNA level of EPHB2 , COL1A2 , and ACTA2 in TGF-β1 stimulated primary human HSCs at various time point (n=3). (D) Western blot showing proteins level of EphB2, aSMA, pSmad2/3 Smad2/3 and Vinculin in TGF-β1 stimulated primary human HSCs at various time point. (E) Messenger RNA level of EPHB2 upon inhibition of canonical TGF-β/SMAD with SIS3 Smad3 inhibitor, SD208 TGFβR1 inhibitor, and SB525334 TGFβR2 inhibitor in TGF-β1-treated primary human HSCs (n=5-7). (F) Effects of silencing Smad2 and Smad3 with Mission®-esiRNA on TGF-β-induced EPHB2 mRNA expression in primary human HSCs (n=3). Non-targeting Mission®-esiRNA was used as control. (G) Accessibility peaks for the transcription factor SMAD3 on the promoter of human EPHB2 locus identified from a publicly available ChIP-seq dataset of TGF-β1 stimulated LX2 cells (GSE38103). (H) Enrichment of SMAD3 binding sites on the promoter of human EPHB2 validated by ChIP-qPCR in TGF-β1 stimulated primary human HSCs. All these data presented as mean ± SEM, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001, **** p < 0.0001 by ANOVA ns = not significant.
Article Snippet: To assess the effect of TGF-β/SMAD canonical pathway on EphB2 expression, HSCs were incubated with the TGF-β type I receptor (TβRI) inhibitors SD208 (1μM), SB525334 (200nM), and the SMAD3 inhibitor SIS3 (5μM) (all from Tocris) for 4h before stimulation with recombinant human TGF-β1 (10ng/ml) for 48h.
Techniques: Gene Expression, Immunofluorescence, Staining, Western Blot, Inhibition, esiRNA, Expressing, Control, ChIP-sequencing, Binding Assay, ChIP-qPCR