Figure 1.

Analysis of mRNA expression in arterial smooth muscle cells derived from the arterial media and intima using LMD followed by real-time RT-PCR. Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase was chosen as housekeeping gene for normalization. For serum response factor, no differences in expression of medial and intimal mRNA were seen (1.1 ± 0.3-fold; mean ± SD). The markers for contractile smooth muscle cells, smoothelin and calponin-1, show higher mRNA expression in the media than in the intima, for smoothelin 4.3 ± 1.0-fold and for calponin-1 2.9 ± 1.1-fold. Three different samples were measured at least two times individually and duplicates were performed for each analysis.