Fig. 2

A Heatmap showing relative expression of INHBA and related genes in the HER2+ subset of breast cancer cell lines. Green bar indicates cluster containing basal cell lines, orange bar indicates cluster containing luminal cell lines. INHBA (blue arrow head) and INHBB (green arrow head) are inversely expressed in basal and luminal cells, respectively. B Normalized relative growth curves showing impact of knockdown of INHBA in four basal (left column) and four luminal (right column) HER2⁺ cell lines. Knockdown (blue) results in significant growth impairment in 3 out of 4 basal cell lines compared to scramble control-treated cells (red). In contrast, growth is not impacted by INHBA knockdown in any of the luminal cell lines, with the exception of UACC893, which saw a small increase in growth rate with knockdown. Cell numbers were normalized to account for different numbers of cells at the start of the assay, and values are relative to cell numbers of the control cells at the end of the assay. Error bars are ± S.D. Asterisks indicate significant differences between growth curves by permutation test; *p < 0.005; **p < 0.05