Fig. 1.

Impact of low (“young”) and high (“old”) cell culture passages in HAoSMCs, a process used for mimicking cell aging in vitro. A Comparison of baseline responses of old and young HAoSMCs (treated with control medium) with regard to processes involved in cell stress, damage, and fate. Bars represent means  ±  standard error of the mean from N  =  6–7 independent experiments including n  =  3 replicates within each plate. *p  <  0.05 (t test young vs. old cells). B Gene set enrichment analysis revealed the most significantly [FDR associated with enrichment score (ES)  <  0.05] enriched pathways and diseases associated with up- (+ ES) and downregulated (− ES) gene expression changes in old HAoSMCs relative to young HAoSMCs. Hierarchical clustering (agglomerative method  =  ward.D2) enabled to group gene sets based on their similarities (1-Jaccard index) for leading edge genes contributing to ES. HAoSMCs human aortic smooth muscle cells; ECM extracellular matrix; FDR false discovery rate; ES enrichment score