Botanical Drug Puerarin Ameliorates Liposaccharide-Induced Depressive Behaviors in Mice via Inhibiting RagA/mTOR/p70S6K Pathways

Figure 3

Puerarin downregulated RagA expression in LPS-challenged mice. (a) qRT-PCR quantification of 6 representative differentially expressed genes. The frontal cortex tissues were collected from 4 groups of mice (i.e., control, LPS, LPS+puerarin (60 mg/kg), and puerarin (60 mg/kg), ) and analysed by qPCR for selected genes. The data were presented as (). . (b) Western blot analysis of the protein expression of RagA. The frontal cortex tissues were collected from the experimental mice () for Western blot analysis of RagA. (c) Quantification of RagA expression. The blots were detected by a densitometric method (). . (d) Immunofluorescence detection of RagA expression in the frontal cortex. The frontal cortex tissues were collected from the experimental mice () for immunohistochemical analysis for RagA expression, whereas DAPI was used to stain nuclear. NeuN was detected as the biomarker for the mature neurons. The images were captured with a Carl Zeiss 700 confocal fluorescence microscope (Jena, Germany). Scale bar, 50 μm. (e) Quantification of RagA expression. Fluorescence intensity of RagA in (d) was evaluated through the densitometric method (). .

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