Cell-type specificity of β-actin expression and its clinicopathological correlation in gastric adenocarcinoma

Figure 1 Comparison of overall β-actin level in gastric normal and tumor tissue (n = 5). A: Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction analysis of β-actin and 18S rRNA was used as an internal loading control (upper panel). Band intensities of β-actin mRNA were normalized with 18S rRNA band intensity of respective lanes and obtained values were plotted (lower panel); B: Western blot analysis of β-actin (upper panel). Band intensity of blot was normalized with the total protein lysate intensity of respective lanes and obtained values were plotted (lower panel). Statistical significance was tested using “paired t-test”. N: Normal; T: Tumor.

Figure 2 Histological analysis of β-actin in gastric normal and tumor tissues (n = 24). “Total IHC score” and “Average total IHC score” were calculated as described in Table 1. A: Representative pictures of β-actin immuno-staining of normal (left panel) and tumor (right panel) tissues showed β-actin expression is majorly distributed between epithelial (red arrow) and inflammatory (blue arrow) cells. The image is taken at 20 × magnification; B: “Total IHC score” of EC and IC of normal (N) and tumor (T) tissues were plotted; C: “Average total IHC score” for normal and tumor tissues were plotted. ¹Mann-Whitney test; ²Wilcoxon matched pair test. IHC: Immunohistochemistry; EC: Epithelial cells; IC: Inflammatory cells.

Figure 3 Correlation of β-actin expression with tumor grade. A: “Total IHC scores” of β-actin immunostaining in inflammatory cells were correlated with tumor grade; B: β-actin expression between gastric cancer cell lines AGS and KATO III was analyzed using western blotting (right panel). Blot intensities were normalized with the intensity of total protein lysate of respective lanes and obtained values from three independent experiments were plotted (left panel); C: “Total IHC scores” of β-actin immunostaining in epithelial cells were correlated with tumor grade. ¹Mann-Whitney test; ²Kruskal-Wallis test.