Figure 2

Overexpression of Cygb attenuates HSC activation. (a) Morphology of primary hepatic stellate cells from WT (HSCs^Cygb-WT) and TG mice (HSCs^Cygb-TG) at days 1, 4 and 7. (b) Image of lipid droplets and fluorescent mCherry protein in primary HSCs^Cygb-TG at day 1. Inset, 3x from original pictures. (c) Immunoblot analysis of CYGB, mCherry and αSMA protein expression in primary HSCs^Cygb-WT and HSCs^Cygb-TG under normal conditions. Right panels show the quantification of the densitometric intensity. Levels were normalized to GAPDH. Full-length Western blots in one gel are presented in Supplementary Fig. S7. (d) mRNA expression levels of Cygb, αSma, Col1α1 and Tgf-β3 in primary HSCs^Cygb-WT (white bars) and HSCs^Cygb-TG (red bars) at days 1 and 4 were determined by RT-qPCR (n = 5 to 10). Levels were normalized to Gapdh. Values are given as the mean ± SD of all experiments. *p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, ***p ≤ 0.001.