Figure 4.

BzATP stimulates DNA fragmentation in rat PCNs. Rat PCNs were incubated in serum-free HGGMEM for 6 h and then stimulated with BzATP (300 µM) for 16 h or H₂O₂ (1 mM) for 2 h. Cells cultured in serumfree HGGMEM (−) overnight were used as the control. Then, cells were lysed, total DNA was purified, the DNA concentration was determined, and 3 µg of purified DNA were loaded onto each lane of a 2% (w/v) agarose gel and electrophoresed, as described in the Materials and methods. DNAfragmentation was visualized after electrophoresis of DNA. Apoptotic U937 cells (+++; provided in the Apoptotic DNA-ladder kit) were used as a positive control and ‘M’ indicates the 100 bp DNA ladder marker.