BCL2 and Hepatic fibrosis: To ascertain whether ATF3 silencing could affect the proliferation, apoptosis or inflammation in liver fibrosis, IHC for BAX (Supplementary Fig. 5a), qRT-PCR for Bax, Mcp1, Bcl2, and Pcna (Supplementary Fig. 5b), WB for BAX, PCNA, and cleaved Caspase3 (Supplementary Fig. 5c) were performed in the whole liver tissue.