FIG. 5.
Detection of insulin, glucagon, and somatostatin mRNA levels. Total RNA from islet cultured for 3 days in the absence of matrigel (control; left) or from islets maintained in culture for 6 weeks on dishes coated with matrigel (right) was collected and combined in pools corresponding to each different group. Five micrograms of RNA was subjected to slot-blot analysis and hybridized with the cDNA probe for rat insulin-II (top), glucagon (center), or somatostatin (bottom). The data were normalized by hybridizing the same membrane with oligo-dT20 and are expressed as a percentage of the value observed in the control sample. The figure shows the mean of two independent experiments performed with two independent pools of pancreatic islets.