2.6 Quantitative RT-PCR
A549 cells were treated with PQ in a dose dependent manner, as indicated, with or without 5 mM lysine, for 24h. The cells were lysed in TRIZOL (Vazyme Biotech Co, R701-02) and total RNA was extracted and reverse transcribed into cDNA by HiScript III RT SuperMix kit (Vazyme Biotech Co, R323). The mRNA expression of E-cadherin and Vimentin was determined by semi-quantification with ChamQ SYBR Color qPCR Master Mix (Vazyme Biotech Co, R323, Q411-02) in QuantStudio 7 Flex. Data were normalized to Actin and calculated by 2[− (Ct target gene−Ct Actin)]. The sequence of the PCR primers was previously reported(Yang et al., 2022).