Sigmaplot software 13

All data are given as means ± standard error of the mean (SEM). First, data were tested for normal distribution and equal variance. In case of parametric data, comparisons between two experimental groups were performed by an unpaired Student’s t-test, while analyses of three groups were performed by one-way ANOVA, followed by the Student-Newman-Keuls test for all pairwise comparisons, including the correction of the α-error according to Bonferroni probabilities to compensate for multiple comparisons. In case of non-parametric data, comparisons between two experimental groups were performed by a Mann-Whitney Rank Sum Test, while analyses of three groups were performed by one-way ANOVA on Ranks, followed by a Student-Newman-Keuls test for all pairwise comparisons, which also included the correction of the α-error according to Bonferroni probabilities. The statistical analyses were performed using the SigmaPlot software 13.0 (Systat Software GmbH, Erkrath, Germany). A p-value < 0.05 was considered to indicate significant differences.

For the microarray analyses, the 40 replicates of each miR from the arrays were merged to one expression value. The miR expression values were log2 transformed and quantile normalized [24 (link)] to account for inter-array effects using the statistical software R with the preprocessCore package. All further analyses were performed on the normalized intensity values. For hierarchical cluster analysis, the Heatplus package (Bioconductor, open source) was used. The statistical analyses of the microarray results were performed only for miRs that could be detected in all samples (signal over background).
Data of qrt-PCR and Western blot analyses are given as means ± standard error of the mean (SEM). Data were first tested for normal distribution and equal variance. Comparison between the experimental groups was performed by the Student’s t-test. The statistical analyses for qrt-PCR and Western blot analyses were performed using the SigmaPlot software 13.0 (Systat Software, Erkrath, Germany).
A p-value <0.05 for all statistical analyses was considered to indicate significant differences.