TAp63 and BCL2 expression profiles are correlated at both the protein and the mRNA level. (A) Scatter plot for correlation in mRNA level in 56 U-CLL cases before treatment showing a modest but statistically significant correlation between TAp63 and BCL2 (ρ = 0.31, P = .01). (B) TAp63 protein levels (measured by flow cytometry) are highly correlated with the corresponding BCL2 protein levels (measured by western blotting and normalized to b-actin) after RNAi silencing of the TP63 gene in 4 TP63^high cases using 3 different siRNAs (ρ = 0.78, P = .003). All comparisons were assessed using as a control cells transfected with a siRNA nonhomologous to any known mammalian gene. (C-D) Inducible downregulation of TAp63 expression (gRNA1: FD, 1.7; P = .03; gRNA2: FD, 1.53) resulted in downregulation of BCL2 expression (gRNA1: FD, 1.34; P = .05; gRNA2: FD, 1.12) in Tet-on-dCas9-KRAB-sgRNA-TAp63 MEC1 cells (C), with strong correlation (ρ = 0.97, P < .0001) between their expression levels (D). The assay was performed in triplicate. *P ≤ .05. RNAi, RNA interference.