Figure 1
TAZ accelerates the branching morphogenesis of mammary gland. (A) Representative images of whole-mount staining of wild-type (WT) or MMTV-rtTA/TRE-TAZ mammary gland at 4 weeks. LN: lymph node; broken line: outline of mammary gland; solid line: start point of mammary gland tree invasion beyond the LN; arrow: advanced branching and TEB invasion. Similar findings observed in n = 6 mice per group (Scale bar = 1 mm). (B) Quantitation of WT or MMTV-rtTA/TRE-TAZ mammary gland branch numbers at 4 weeks. n = 3 mice per group; error bars represent SD; ***p < 0.001 by two-tailed student’s t-test. (C) H&E, immunohistochemistry staining for TAZ and Ki67 in 4-week WT or MMTV-rtTA/TRE-TAZ mammary gland. (Scale bar = 100 µm). (D) Real-time qPCR measured expression levels of Egf, Areg, Tgf-α and Egfr of 4-week WT or MMTV-rtTA/TRE-TAZ mammary gland. n = 3 mice per group; error bars represent standard deviation (SD); ***p < 0.001 by two-tailed student’s t-test. (E) Immunoblot of AKT, phospho-AKT (S473), ERK1/2 and phospho-ERK1/2 (Thr202/Tyr204) expression in WT or MMTV-rtTA/TRE-TAZ mammary gland. n = 2 WT mice; n = 3 MMTV-rtTA/TRE-TAZ mice.
