Effect of bioactive peptides
and their derivatives on TNF-induced
endothelial superoxide generation: (A) bioactive peptides (IRW and
IQW); (B) respective dipeptides of IRW (IR and RW) and IQW (IQ and
QW); (C) individual amino acids (I, R, Q, and W); peptide sequence
combination of constituent amino acids (I+R+W and I+Q+W). Confluent
HUVEC monolayers were pretreated for 20 h with 50 mol/L peptide and
amino acids prior to 1 h of incubation with 5 ng/mL TNF. A representative
set of images are shown. Data were calculated as MFI/cell and expressed
as fold increase over the untreated control. Bars represent mean values
(mean ± SEM, n = 8 independent experiments).
(###) P < 0.001 and (#) P <
0.05, compared to untreated control; (∗∗) P < 0.01 and (∗) P < 0.05, compared
to TNF alone. Bar graph having lighter color indicates that a particular
treatment has a significant effect compared with TNF alone.