Differential Regulation of Cardiac Function and Intracardiac Cytokines by Rapamycin in Healthy and Diabetic Rats

Figure 3

Effect of Rapamycin treatment on fibrosis and phosphorylation status Ser473 residue of Akt in ZL and ZO rats. (a) Representative images of Trichrome stained heart sections of ZL-C, ZL-Rap, ZO-C, and ZO-Rap are shown. Images were taken at 10x magnification and the insets were taken at 40x magnification (scale bars = 200 μm). (b) Graph shows the cumulative data for normalized fibrotic area from 10 images for each animal ( animals per group; 50 images total for one group). Fibrosis was higher in the heart tissue sections of ZO-C and ZL-Rap compared to that of ZL-C. ZO-Rap heart tissue sections displayed reduced fibrosis compared to ZO-C. (c) Representative images of Western blots probed with anti-phosphoSer473 Akt and anti-Akt antibodies. Data for 3 different animals per group are shown. All bands are from the same gel. (d). Bar graph shows the ratio of intensity of bands corresponding to phosphoSer473 Akt to total Akt after normalizing to total protein levels (). for ZL-C versus ZO-C or ZO-Rap and for ZO-Rap versus ZO-C and for ZO-C versus ZL-C.

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