Fig. 5

NAO- and ceramic-derived PM were most potent at perturbing metal ion homeostasis. ATII cells and primary ATII cells were exposed to 8 µg/cm² of the 6 different PM types for 2–24 h, after which various markers of metal ion homeostasis were examined. A GSVA of “Metallothioneins bind metals (Reactome)” pathway. B Heatmap of genes within the Metallothioneins bind metals (Reactome)” pathway. C Normalised counts for MT1G (counts per million, determined with same RNA-Seq dataset as Fig. 3). D Normalised counts for MT2A C. Normalised counts for MT1E. D. Normalised counts for MT1X. In A: Box contains median, upper, and lower quartiles, with whiskers representing the range. A RM one-way ANOVA test was used with a Dunnett’s post-hoc test. In C-F: Bars represent mean + SEM of the normalised counts, significant differences compared to the ctrl were determined using a generalised linear model with edgeR. Statistically significant values are indicated with the star notation on the graphs. ** = p ≤ 0.01, **** = p ≤ 0.0001