Fig. 7.

Littermates were genotyped before establishing astrocytic cultures for K_ir4.1 protein analysis. A: Mice were genotyped by tail snip PCR to distinguish wild-type, heterozygous and K_ir4.1 knockout animals. From the left to right, 100-bp DNA ladder, two K_ir4.1 knockout animals (-/- allele has 383-bp band), wild-type (WT) (+/+ allele only has 634 bp), heterozygous (+/- allele has both bands) and last lane, absence of mouse genomic DNA (no band). B: Western blot of cultured astrocytes from control and knockout animals demonstrates K_ir4.1 expression. Lane 1, WT cultured cortical astrocytes; lane 2, heterozygous cultured cortical astrocytes; lanes 3,4, cultured cortical astrocytes from 2 knockout animals; lane 5, rat spinal cord lysates used as a positive control. This blot was stripped and reprobed with actin as a loading control.