Fig. 2

Differential expression of genes after whole cigarette smoke exposure of primary bronchial epithelial cells differentiated at the air–liquid interface. Gene expression was assessed by RNA-seq in well-differentiated primary bronchial epithelial cells (PBEC; n = 8 individual donors) grown at the air–liquid interface (ALI) at several time-points after whole cigarette smoke exposure. The volcano plots show DEGs (adj. p-value < 0.05, FC >|2|) upon smoke exposure at A 1 h (112 genes), B 4 h (1048 genes), and C 24 h (57 genes). The red dots indicate the upregulated genes, and the blue dots indicate the downregulated genes. D Heatmap of DEGs upon cigarette smoke exposure. Red and blue in the row sidebar indicate upregulated and downregulated genes, respectively