Fig. 1

ULK1 protein level parallels to that of PVT1 in a subset of human PDA tissues. a Western blot analysis of the expression of ULK1 protein in PDA tissues (n = 20) and the corresponding adjacent non-tumor pancreatic specimens (n = 20). GAPDH acted as an endogenous control. T, tumor tissues; N, non-tumor pancreatic tissues; b The quantitation of the western blot results in (a). ULK1 protein expression was up-regulated in 13 PDA tissues compared with the corresponding adjacent non-tumor pancreatic specimens in 20 PDA tissues. The high value of ULK1 protein was defined as fold change > 1 (n = 13); c The level of ULK1 mRNA in 20 PDA tissues was of no statistical significance compared to that of the corresponding adjacent non-tumor pancreatic specimens by qRT-PCR. Data are presented as the mean ± S.D. (n = 20); d PVT1 expression in PDA tissues from the 20 PDA cases based on qRT-PCR analysis. The high value of PVT1 was defined as fold change > 2 (n = 15), the rest including down-regulation or no evident difference in expression in PDA tissues compared with PDA expression in the corresponding adjacent non-tumor tissue, was defined as low values (n = 5); e PVT1 expression in PDA tissues based on ISH analysis and the percent of PVT1-positive samples in different groups; f The expression level of PVT1 mRNA was positively correlated with that of ULK1 protein in 20 PDA tissues. The statistical analysis was performed using Pearson’s correlation coefficient (R = 0.8659, P < 0.0001); g The level of PVT1 mRNA in PDA cell lines by qRT-PCR. GAPDH acted as an endogenous control; h The expression level of PVT1 mRNA was positively correlated with that of ULK1 protein in PDA cell lines (R = 0.8546, P = 0.0069). Data are presented as the mean ± S.D. from three independent experiments. ^* P < 0.05, ^** P < 0.01 by Student’s t-test