Fig. 5

siRNA validation of candidate RFX regulators. The genes SP2 and ESR1 represent the high-scoring group of candidate RFX regulators (cf. Fig. 4 and Additional file 4). In the MCF7 breast cancer cell line, amplification efficiency-adjusted mRNA fold change quantifications of RFX1, 2, 3, 5 and 7 were normalized to the geometric mean of HPRT1 and HSPCB, whereby a fold change equaling 1 describes an unchanged expression level. For this we used (a) SP2 siRNA versus scrambled (Scr) control siRNA knockdown, and (b) ESR1 siRNA versus scrambled (Scr) control siRNA knockdown. In (a, b) error bars represent SEM and fold-change statistical significance was calculated using the student two-sample t-test (***p-value ≤0.01, **p-value ≤0.05, *p-value ≤0.1). a, c SP2 siRNA knockdown was confirmed at both the mRNA and protein level and a significant up-regulation of RFX7 and down-regulation of RFX5 were observed. b, c ESR1 siRNA knockdown was confirmed at both the mRNA and protein level and significant up-regulations of RFX2, 3, 5 and 7 were observed. c Immunoblotting band intensities were quantified using ImageJ and normalized with the indicated loading controls