Fig. 2

ASS1-mediated metabolic changes in primary lung fibroblasts. A The correlation of ASS1 protein expression and myo-inositol (or inositol) abundance (green dot) or ASS1 protein expression and inositol-4-monophospahte abundance (orange square) from three normal fibroblasts and four IPF fibroblasts. The solid black lines represent the linear relationship. r is the Pearson correlation coefficient. B PLS-DA of the metabolite values across the normal primary lung fibroblasts transfected with either non-targeting control siRNAs (siControl) or ASS1-specific siRNAs (siASS1). C Top 25 ranking enriched differential metabolic pathways between control and ASS1-knockdown lung fibroblasts identified by Metabolite Set Enrichment Analysis (MSEA). D Variable importance in the projection (VIP) score plots for the top-15 most important metabolites identified by PLS-DA in (B). The boxes on the right side indicate the relative abundance in each group. Red: higher abundance; Blue: lower abundance