CARTp mediates excitatory effects of CCK on cultured vagal afferent neurons. (A) CCK8s (10 nM, 2 h) stimulated expression of 3.45 kb CART-Luc; co-transfection with CART siRNA (50 nM), but not a scrambled sequence, reduced the number of CART positive cells by 36 ± 3.9 % (p<0.05) and reduced fluorescence intensity in most of the remainder, and significantly inhibited the response. (B) Similarly, CCK8s (10 nM, 2 h) stimulated expression of 3.034 kb Y2R-Luc and co-transfection with CART siRNA inhibited this. But, (C) CCK8s (10 nM, 2 h) inhibited expression of 1.6 kb MCH-Luc and CART siRNA had no effect on the response. (D) Pretreatment of cells with brefeldin A (BFA, 10 µg/ml) inhibited the CART-Luc and, (E) the Y2R-Luc responses to CCK8s, respectively. ** p<0.01, ***p<0.001.