Western blot results showed that lentivirus containing shMTERF3 infection effectively silenced MTERF3 expression in HCC-97H and LM3 cells (Supplementary Fig. 2a, b), and MTERF3 knockdown cells displayed a weaker proliferative capacity as compared with controls (Supplementary Fig. 2c, d). Here, MTERF3 is linked to infection.