α-actinin-1 expression is increased in human breast cancer.

<p>(A) Comparison of <i>ACTN1</i> mRNA in healthy (grey boxes) and cancerous tissues (red boxes) as indicated. Box plots show median expression as a line, with 25 and 75 percentiles as lower and upper boxes with whiskers and outlier points extending to cover remaining data [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0196986#pone.0196986.ref029" target="_blank">29</a>]. The x-axis indicates the number of patients. (B) Representative immunohistochemistry images of a healthy and two breast cancer sections stained for α-actinin-1 (A1-341 ab). The black arrowhead in healthy section indicates a luminal cell, and a black arrow indicates a myoepithelial cell. The blue arrow in the same image shows a stromal fibroblast positive for α-actinin-1. Scale bar, 50 μm. (C) D-HSCORE score [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0196986#pone.0196986.ref033" target="_blank">33</a>] to compare α-actinin-1 staining signal of healthy (n = 19) and breast cancer tissues (n = 46) stained in (B). ***P<0.001 by student’s t-test. (D) Human breast cancer tissue lysate array immunoblotted for α-actinin-1. Each vertical line of spots represents triplicates of cancer (ca) and matched healthy (contr) tissues from a patient (n = 55). The columns represent the expression ratio of α-actinin-1 between cancer and adjacent healthy tissue of each patient based on the average spot intensity of triplicates. The red columns indicate ≥1.5-fold increase in α-actinin-1 levels.