Fig. 1

Expression of piRNAs in tissue samples from patients suffering from clear cell renal cell carcinoma. Measurements of (a) piR-30924, (b) piR-57125, and (c) piR-38756 were performed in normal renal parenchyma distant from tumor (N, n = 77), in tissue from non-metastatic (RCC-M0, n = 76) and metastatic primary tumor (RCC-M1, n = 30) of patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma at the time of nephrectomy as well as in bone metastatic tissue samples (Meta, n = 13) from patients suffering from renal cell carcinoma metastases. The miRNAs miR-28 and miR-106a were used as normalizers according to previous results on suitable reference genes for miRNA expression in renal cell carcinomas [30]. Boxes in the box-and whisker plots represent the lower and upper quartiles with medians, whiskers illustrate the whole range of the samples. Significant differences between the study groups were estimated by the one-way ANOVA test with multiple comparisons corrected according to Holm-Sidak. Significances of at least p < 0.05 are indicated by the following symbols: a, compared to “N”; b, compared “RCC-M0”; c, compared to “RCC-M1”, and d, compared to “Meta”