Figure 1.

Gelatin zymography analysis for gelatinolytic activities in liver tissue protein extracts (A) and plasma (B). Total protein extracts were isolated from normal (unmanipulated animals) 2, 5, 10, 20, and 30 day after sham and BDL rat livers, and plasma was obtained from the sham and BDL animals at days 2, 5, and 10 after surgery. Twenty micrograms of proteins and 5 μl of plasma were loaded onto SDS-PAGE gels and processed as described in Materials and Methods. Conditioned medium (CM) from BHK cells expressing MMP-2 and MMP-9 was included as a control for size comparison with sample gelatinolytic bands.