Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2020 Aug 7;11:3978. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-17818-w

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply 2020

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PMC Copyright notice

Fig. 3 — a Mesenchymal liver cancer cells are resistant to methionine/cystine restriction-induced transcriptional stress response. Five indicated liver cancer cells were cultured in complete medium (CM) or methionine/cystine-restricted medium (MCR) for 6 h. The expression of indicated genes was analyzed by qPCR (n = 4 replicates per group). b Mesenchymal liver cancer cells are resistant to methionine/cystine restriction-induced cell death. Five indicated liver cancer cells were cultured in complete medium (CM) or Met and Cys restricted medium (MR) for 24 h and analyzed by microscopy (representative images were shown from at least three independent experiments). Bar, 100 μm. c Reducing methionine/cystine decreases cell survival in HNF4α-positive epithelial cells but not in HNF4α-negative mesenchymal liver cancer cells. Five liver cancer cells were cultured in medium containing the indicated concentrations of methionine and cystine for 24 h. The relative number of surviving cells was measured by the WST-1 assay (n = 5 replicates for each line; **p < 0.01 between slopes of any HNF4α-positive epithelial cells vs. any HNF4α-negative mesenchymal cells using the semilog line equation in the nonlinear fit regression module of Prism8). d Mesenchymal SNU449 cells are specifically resistant to methionine/cystine-restriction induced cell death. Epithelial Hep3B cells and mesenchymal SNU449 cells were cultured in complete medium or medium depleted of the indicated exogenous amino acid for 24 h. The relative number of surviving cells was measured by the WST-1 assay (n = 4 replicates per group). e Methionine/cystine restriction sensitizes epithelial but not mesenchymal liver cancer cells to sorafenib-induced cell death. Five indicated liver cancer cell lines were cultured in complete medium (CM) or methionine/cystine-restricted medium (MCR), together with the indicated concentrations of sorafenib for 24 h (n = 5 replicates per group). The relative number of surviving cells was measured by WST-1 assay. For graphs in (a, c, d, e), values are expressed as mean ± s.e.m., two-tailed, unpaired Student’s t-test, *p < 0.05.