Fig. 2

miR-18a suppresses fibrosis, cardiac hypertrophy and apoptosis in HF cardiomyocytes. Normal cardiomyocytes were used as controls, and HF cardiomyocytes were transfected or not transfected with NC-mimic or miR-18a mimic. a miR-18a expression pattern in the mouse cardiomyocytes detected by RT-qPCR normalized to U6. b Western blot analysis of the expression patterns of cMyb, MMP-9, Collagen 1 and TGF-β1 protein in mouse cardiomyocytes normalized to GAPDH. c Apoptosis of mouse cardiomyocytes determined by flow cytometry. * p < 0.05 vs. control cardiomyocytes. # p < 0.05vs. HF cardiomyocytes transfected with NC-mimic. n = 10. The measurement data (mean ± standard deviation) were compared by the t test. The experiment was conducted 3 times independently. One-way ANOVA was utilized for comparisons among multiple groups, and the Tukey’s post-hoc test was employed for intra-group pairwise comparison