Fig. 3

Knocking down of AMPKα1 disrupted the inhibitory effect of HGF on the TGF-β1-induced myofibroblastic differentiation in tendon fibroblasts. Wild-type tendon fibroblasts, scramble-siRNA-transfected tendon fibroblasts, and AMPKα1-targeting siRNA-transfected tendon fibroblasts were treated with TGF-β1 (10 ng/ml) or TGF-β1 (10 ng/ml) + HGF (20 ng/ml) for 72 h. a Typical cell morphology of control, siRNA-scramble transfected, and siRNA-AMPKα1 transfected tendon fibroblasts under stimulation by TGF-β1 and HGF. b–e The mRNA levels of α-SMA (b), Col I α1 (b), Col III (d), and fibronectin (e), four markers of myofibroblastic differentiation, were measure by real-time quantitative PCR analysis; β-actin was used as a housekeeping gene for reference. All data were normalized to β-actin expression (2^−ΔΔCt methods). N = 8. *P < 0.05