Figure 1.

Effect of  lycopene on U-II-induced cardiomyocyte hypertrophy. (a) Effect of  lycopene on U-II-induced morphologic changes in cardiomyocytes. Cultured cardiomyocytes were exposed to vehicle control (control: top left), to lycopene alone at 3 μM (lycopene: top right), or to U-II at 1 nM for 24 h in the absence (U-II: bottom left) or presence of lycopene (U-II + lycopene: bottom right) and then immunostained with an anti-α-actinin antibody (red), and the nucleus was stained with DAPI (blue). The figure shows a representative stain prepared based on 3 independent experiments. Scale bar shows 20 μm. (b) Relative cardiomyocyte size. The cultured cardiomyocytes were exposed to vehicle control or U-II at 1 nM or 24 h in the absence or presence of lycopene (1, 3, and 10 μM). The surface areas of the cardiomyocytes were measured using NIH image software in 60 randomly chosen cells from 3 dishes. The data are presented as mean ± SEM. (c) Measuring protein synthesis by using [³H]-leucine incorporation. The results are shown as mean ± SEM (n = 6). *P < 0.05 versus control; ^# P < 0.05 versus U-II alone.