Fig. 2

miR-671-5p directly targets FOXM1 in the 21T cell lines. a Inverse correlation between miR-671-5p and FOXM1 expression in 21T cell lines was detected by qRT-PCR. The left two panels represent qPCR results. The right panel show statistical analysis. The Pearson correlation coefficient between miR-671-5p expression and FOXM1 expression is − 0.61 with a p value of 0.0336, indicating a relatively strong and statistically significant negative relationship between miR-671-5p and FOXM1 expression. b FOXM1 expression was significantly repressed after miR-671-5p transfection in H16N2 cell line, and rescued by miR-671-5p inhibitor transfection in both H16N2 abd 21MT cell lines. c pEZX-MT05 vector was inserted with wild-type binding site in the 3′UTR of FOXM1 (FOXM1 3′UTR Wt) and the mutant sequence (FOXM1 3′UTR Mu) corresponding to miR-671-5p sequence that inserted into pEZX-MT04 vector. The mutated nucleotides were indicated by star symbols. d Relative luciferase activity was measured in 21T cell lines co-transfected with either 200 ng of pEZX-MT04-miR-671-5p or a scrambled control and 100 ng of pEZX-MT05-FOXM1-Wt or pEZX-MT05-FOXM1-Mu by FuGENE® HD Transfection Reagent (Life Technologies) for 48 h. The luciferase activity was significantly decreased in all 21T series cell lines when co-transfected with miR-671-5p and FOXM1-Wt. Values represent the mean ± S.D. for three independent experiments (*p < 0.05 and **p < 0.01)