Fig. 3

Reprogramming-induced differential expressed miRNAs in CRC-iPC cells regulate EMT via the TGF-β signaling pathway. a Hierarchical clustering analysis of CRC-iPCs, the parental CRCs and an ESC line, H9, in duplicate. The differentially-expressed miRNAs are categorized into three groups, I – III. MiRNAs that have been previously reported to be associated with reprogramming are shown on the top: horizontal bars indicate miRNA families; blue slanting arrows indicate the individual miRNAs and red asterisks indicate the let 7 miRNA family (see Additional file 2: Table S2 and text for further description). Color scale bar indicates the relative miRNA expression level. b Volcano plot identified 50 and 52 down- and up-regulated miRNAs (light blue-colored cubes) in the CRC-iPC cells with log₂(fold change) ≥ 2.0 or ≤ − 2, and p-value < 0.05. c KEGG pathway analysis of the predicted target genes. d Expression validation of randomly-selected miRNAs targeting SNAI1 and E-cadherin (CDH1) (see Table 2) by real-time RT-PCR. The data shown are the mean values obtained from the four iPC clones analyzed in the study. Expression levels were relative to the parental cells, represented as mean ± SEM; *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. e Predicted targeting of the TGF-β pathway that regulates the EMT/MET processes by the differentially expressed miRNAs. The predicted miRNAs are shown in boxes; up- and downward thick arrows indicate the up- or down-regulated miRNAs. The TGF-β pathway was modified from [38]