Figure 4. Effect of orchidectomy on the ligand-dependent activation of the EGFR and downstream signaling pathways in the mesenteric artery.

Segments of the superior mesenteric artery from control and 5 months post-orchidectomized rats were incubated in the absence (−) and presence (+) of 10 nM EGF during 2 min, and the reaction was thereafter arrested freezing the samples in liquid nitrogen as described in Materials and Methods. The frozen samples were stored and thereafter homogenized and processed by Western blots using the indicated antibodies. The photograph shows the phosphorylation levels of the EGFR, p115, Akt and ERK1/2, and the total levels of Akt and ERK1/2 and segments of PVDF membranes stained with Fast Green used as additional loading control. The top and bottom arrows point to the phosphorylated EGFR and p115, respectively. The figure shows a typical experiment from control (n = 4) and orchidectomized (n = 4) rats.