Fig. 6.

Modulation of Rho guanosine triphosphatases (GTPases) by mucin 1 (MUC1) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLSs). a) To determine the influence of MUC1 silencing on assembly and reorganization of cytoskeleton, RA FLSs grown on glass coverslips were stained with phalloidin four hours after wounding. The green arrows indicate formation of filopodia and the orange arrows indicate lamellipodia. Original magnification 400×. b) RA FLSs were transfected with MUC1 small interfering RNA (siRNA), and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was conducted to measure the messenger RNA (mRNA) expression levels of Rho GTPases (n = 5). c) and d) Inhibitory effects of MUC1 silencing on protein expression levels of Rho GTPases in RA FLSs measured by western blot (WB) (n = 5). Data are presented as the mean and standard error of the mean (SEM). *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001; one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by Tukey’s test was used. GAPDH, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase; NC, negative control.