Fig. 5

AHR hyper-activation increases expression of migration and invasion-associated genes in Hs578T cells. Hs578T cells were treated with vehicle or 0.5 μM FICZ for 48 hours, sorted into ALDH^high and ALDH^low cells, and then assayed by RT-qPCR for the relative levels of the seven migration and invasion-associated genes indicated. Gene expression was then normalized to Gapdh mRNA levels and fold-change from vehicle-treated ALDH^low or ALDH^high cells was calculated. Data from nine independent experiments are presented as mean fold-change ± standard error. In all cases, statistical significance was determined with the Wilcoxon rank sum test to determine if the distributions of results, relative to 1 as the standard (represented by the dotted line on each graph), are different between the comparison groups. Asterisks indicate a significant increase in the mRNA fold-change, *P <0.05, **P <0.005, ***P <0.0005. (a) Migration- and invasion-associated gene expression levels were normalized to expression levels in vehicle-treated ALDH^low cells and the distribution of outcomes from vehicle-treated ALDH^high versus vehicle-treated ALDH^low cells was compared. (b) Gene expression levels were normalized to expression levels in vehicle-treated ALDH^low cells and the distribution of outcomes from vehicle-treated ALDH^low versus FICZ-treated ALDH^low cells was compared. (c) Gene expression levels were normalized to expression levels in vehicle-treated ALDH^high cells and the distribution of outcomes from vehicle-treated ALDH^high versus FICZ-treated ALDH^high cells was compared