Fig. 2.

MHC-Plin5 mice show massive increase of LDs in their heart. (A) TAG content in cardiac muscle of male WT and MHC-Plin5 at three months old. Errors bars are means ± SEM; n = 6 for WT and n = 4 for MHC-Plin5; **P < 0.001 for WT versus MHC-Plin5. (B) Representative electron micrographs depict the histological appearance of left ventricles from fed WT and MHC-Plin5 mice at three months old (magnification 3,200, bar equals 500 nm). MHC-Plin5 hearts accumulated LDs (arrowheads) around clusters of mitochondria (M, arrowheads), whereas no lipid droplets were observed in similar regions of the left ventricle from WT mice. We used four mice per group and studied 35 positions per sample. (C) Morphometric analysis of LDs. Using six electron micrographs of left ventricles from three fed and overnight-fasted WT and MHC-Plin5 mice three months old, the LD number was manually counted and mitochondria area was determined using ImageJ software. Means are errors bars ± SEM; ***P < 0.001 for WT fed versus WT fasted, ^###P < 0.001 for MHC-Plin5 fed versus MHC-Plin5 fasted, ^##$P < 0.001 fasted MHC-Plin5 versus fasted WT.