DNMT3B knockdown inhibits low-dose 5-aza mediated genome-wide activation of p53 target genes and repression of pluripotency genes.

<p><b>A</b>, Summary of results from expression microarray data of NT2/D1-R1 sh-control cells (sh-ctrl) and NT2/D1-R1 sh-DNMT3B cells (sh3B) untreated or treated for 3 days with 10 nM 5-aza. Knockdown of DNMT3B greatly reduced the number of genes altered with 5-aza treatment while DNMT3B knockdown alone results in minimal expression changes. The number of genes altered was based on the average of 3 biological replicates with 1.5-fold or greater change and a p value<0.01. <b>B</b>, Unsupervised hierarchical cluster analysis of the expression data in (A) was performed on the 541 genes altered more than 1.8-fold with p value<0.01 ANOVA BH corrected, between NT2/D1-R1 sh-control cells (sh-ctrl) and NT2/D1-R1 sh-DNMT3B cells (sh3B) untreated or treated for 3 days with 10 nM 5-aza. Upregulated gene are red, downregulated genes are green. C, Partitioning around mediods (PAM) analysis of 1169 genes changed 1.5-fold or greater with BH corrected p-value of <0.01. Cluster 1 and Cluster 2 of 6 total clusters are shown. All clusters are provided in supplemental <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0053003#pone.0053003.s004" target="_blank">Fig S4</a>. The number of genes in the clusters and the mean silhouette width (MSW) value is indicated. Expression intensity values for representative genes in Cluster 1 (pluripotent genes) and Cluster 2 (p53 target genes) is provided on the right and additional prominent members are provided below each cluster. Error bars are S.E.M. * = p<0.05 compared to untreated control.