Fig. 2.

Cx43 protein levels are attenuated by S. aureus and PGN in astrocytes. Primary astrocytes were seeded at 10⁶ cells per well in 6-well plates and incubated overnight. The following day, cells were stimulated with either 10⁷ heat-inactivated S. aureus or 10 μg/mL PGN for 24 h, whereupon protein extracts from whole cell lysates (40 μg per sample) were evaluated for Cx43 expression by Western blotting as described in the Materials and Methods. Results are presented as the raw gel data (A) and quantitative analysis of Cx43 expression by densometric scanning (B). For quantitation in (B), the pixel intensity of each Cx43 band was normalized to the amount of actin included as a loading control. Results are expressed in arbitrary units as the ratio of Cx43 to actin and represent the mean ± SEM of three independent experiments. Significant differences are denoted with asterisks (*P < 0.05).