Figure 3.

MCPIP-1 induces spontaneous apoptosis of neutrophils by regulation of anti-apoptotic transcripts. (A,B) Neutrophils were isolated from human blood and cultivated as indicated. (A) Relative expression of apoptotic genes analyzed by qPCR. n = 4–7. Bars represent the mean relative expression ± SD. (B) Graph shows mean expression of MCL-1 mRNA in four different donors (D1-4) ± SEM. (C) The secondary structure of 3′UTR fragment of the MCL-1 mRNA from a depicted region between 1,796 and 1,891 nt (left). Evolutionary conserved among species and thermodynamically stable RNA stem-loops secondary structures from 3′UTR transcript of MCL-1 (right). (D) The level of MCL-1 mRNA in cell lysates before and after immunoprecipitation with an anti-MCPIP-1 antibody. (E) Relative mean expression of apoptotic genes in murine neutrophils isolated from peritoneum of Control Mutant (CM) and Mcpip-1-KO (KO) mice 3 h post-injection with thioglycolate. n = 3–5 animals representative Western blot analysis is presented in insert. (F) The graph represents a ratio between expression of Mcl-1 and Bim mRNA in murine neutrophils ± SEM. p-value of < 0.05 (*); p-value of < 0.01 (**); p-value of < 0.001 (***); ns for non-significant.