Table 2.

Quantification of rat hepatic Bcl6 mRNA and hnRNA levels across the Bcl6 gene

	Bcl6 region assayed	Male	Female	Male + GHcont	Male-female ratio
hnRNA	Intron 1–exon 4	134 ± 34	654 ± 163	614 ± 150	0.21 ± 0.02
	Intron 4–exon 5	48 ± 7	29 ± 8	33 ± 10	1.8 ± 0.5
	Exon 5–exon 10	23 ± 3	2.0 ± 0.7	1.6 ± 0.3	12 ± 4
mRNA	Exon 9–intron 9	27.1 ± 6.9	1.00 ± 0.15	1.67 ± 0.11	27.1 ± 6.9

Relative levels of liver Bcl6 hnRNA presented in Fig. 4B were averaged across three distinct regions of the Bcl6 gene: intron 1 through exon 4 (primer pairs numbered 2–7 in Fig. 4B), intron 4 through exon 5 (primer pairs 9–18), and exon 5 through exon 10 (primers pairs 19–22); data shown are mean ± sd values. Relative levels of Bcl6 mRNA (mean ± se.) are based on Fig. 1D. Based on these data, the transcriptional block in female liver and in continuous GH-treated (GH_cont) male liver decreased steady-state levels of Bcl6 hnRNA sequences beyond exon 5 by 325-fold (in females; i.e. 654/2.0) or by 380-fold (in continuous GH-treated males; i.e. 614/1.6) when compared with hnRNA sequences before intron 4. The corresponding decrease in hnRNA transcript levels across the gene in male liver was only 5.8-fold (i.e. 134/23), which may reflect increased processing of the longer transcripts to mature mRNA.