Figure 4.

EMP2 regulates gene sets related to blood vessel morphogenesis. (A) Intersection of genes involved in neoangiogenesis and its related pathways depicted using a chord diagram. The chord diagram was generated in "GOplot", version 1.0.2 (https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=GOplot). (B) Heatmap of EMP2, HIF1α, and VEGFA expression in ARPE-19 cells with modified EMP2 levels. Successful EMP2 transcript alteration was confirmed for wild type (WT), EMP2 overexpressing (OE), and EMP2 knock down (KD) ARPE-19 cells. HIF1α and VEGFA expression correlates with EMP2 expression, with increased transcript levels in OE and decreased transcript levels in KD. The housekeeping genes MT-RNR1 (16S rRNA) and VCP were used as controls for normalization. All samples were performed in triplicate. (C) HIF1α expression is induced in ARPE-19 WT under hypoxic conditions. Analysis of HIF1α and EMP2 protein expression in WT ARPE-19 cells under normoxic conditions and following 2–4 h of hypoxic stress (0.5% O₂). Bands were visualized using autoradiography. Bar diagrams depict mean values and standard error of the mean. Statistical significance was established using a Student’s t-test (unpaired, two-tailed). **, p = 0.0076. Original, uncropped blots are presented in Supplementary Fig. S3.