Fig. 4

Emodin inhibited PI3K/Akt signaling pathway in human PASMCs under hypoxia exposure. a Transcriptomic analysis of human PASMCs co-treated with 40 µM emodin and hypoxia. The left panels show the heatmap displaying a subset of differentially expressed genes of PASMCs treated with emodin for 24 h (absolute FC > 2, P < 0.05) and the right panels show that the most enriched pathways of differentially expressed genes. b Proteomic analysis of human PASMCs co-treated with 40 µM emodin and hypoxia. The left panels show the heatmap displaying a subset of differentially expressed proteins of human PASMCs treated with emodin for 24 h (absolute FC value > 1, P < 0.05) and the right panels show the most enriched pathway of proteins differentially expressed. c Western blotting and quantitative analysis of p-PI3K/PI3K ratio and p-Akt/Akt ratio. N = 3. Dunnett’s multiple comparisons test, β-actin was used as the internal control. *P < 0.05 and **P < 0.01 versus normoxia but 0 µM emodin group; ^#P < 0.05 and ^##P < 0.01 versus hypoxia but 0 µM emodin group