Figure 3
From: Disruption of retinal pigment epithelial cell properties under the exposure of cotinine
The effect of nicotine and cotinine on RPE cell migration. (A) ARPE-19 cell migration after different nicotine and/or cotinine treatments was evaluated by scratch wound assay. Images were taken at time 0, 6, 12 and 24 hours. The wound area was measured by Image J software. The percentage migration was calculated by the average area reduction at 6, 12 or 24-hour as compared to time 0. The data represented was the mean of triplicated experiments ± standard deviation. Scale bar: 100 μm. ‘**’p < 0.01; ‘***’p < 0.001. (B) The expression of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) marker protein (α-SMA, SNAIL and VIMENTIN) in ARPE-19 cell after different nicotine and/or cotinine treatments was evaluated by immunoblotting. Compared to the vehicle control group, the expression of α-SMA was significantly reduced in the 2 μM cotinine and 2 μM nicotine-cotinine mixture groups, whereas the expression of VIMENTIN was significantly decreased in the 1 μM and 2 μM cotinine as well as 1 μM nicotine-cotinine mixture groups. β-actin was used as housekeeping protein for normalization. ‘*’p < 0.05; ‘**’p < 0.01.
