Figure 7.

Effect of retinoic acid and ET-1 on the mRNA expression of TGF-β1, collagen I and collagen III. HSC were incubated with 2.5 μM retinoic acid or the vehicle (ethanol, 1 μl ml⁻¹) without or with ET-1 (50 nM) for 10–12 days. RNA was then extracted and RT–PCR was performed as described in the Methods section. For normalization, β-actin mRNA expression was determined. (a) Representative expression of various mRNA transcripts from five to seven separate experiments. (b) Ratio of the expression of different mRNA transcripts against that of β-actin. ^*P<0.05 vs control. CT, control; RA, retinoic acid.