Exposure to both flaming and smoldering PIEs upregulates expression of xenobiotic metabolism enzymes and proteins. Differentiated HNECs from 6 primary donors at ALI were apically exposed to 20 μg/cm2 of smoldering or flaming PIE condensates with a PBS vehicle negative control for 4 h. RNA was collected for bulk RNA-seq and QIAGEN Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA). (A) Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were defined as: up- or downregulated by fc>1 and p-value <.05. Plotting base mean counts from all DEGs identified clustering of genes modified by exposures to flaming PIE condensates. Qiagen IPA analysis of RNA-seq data identified top signaling pathways based on up- for down-regulated gene activity for 20 μg/cm2 smoldering (B) and flaming (C) PIE exposures.
