(A) Representative frozen sections of aortic sinus plaques before and after laser microdissection. The serial sections from control, apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I), and apoA-IM recipient mice were selected (5 mice per group) and the macrophage-rich areas were dissected. (B) Total RNA was extracted from the dissected segments from recipient mice transplanted with bone marrow transduced empty vector (VC), wild-type apoA-I (A-I), or apolipoprotein A-I Milano (A-IM) genes. Reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was performed using primers specific for beta-actin (lanes 1 to 3, 410 bp) or apoA-I (lanes 6 to 8, 301 bp). Lane 4 is a positive control (PC) for apoA-I derived from packaging cell lines; lane 5 is negative control (NC) from PCR in the absence of primers.