Fig. 1. The BP of genomically “humanized” CHGA mice correlated with circulating CST levels.

The “humanized” transgenic mice express the human CHGA gene and their BP was measured along with that of the WT mice. In these “humanized” CHGA mice, circulating levels of the human CST was also measured. (a) Elevated BP in HumCHGA19 mice: The SBP was significantly different between groups of mice as determined by one-way ANOVA with multiple-comparison post-hoc tests (p< 0.0001). Specifically, HumCHGA19 had higher SBP compared to WT (### p= 0.0004) and HumCHGA31 (*** p= 0.00005). DBP also varied significantly in the HumCHGA19 mice compared to HumCHGA31 and WT mice (p< 0.0001). In HumCHGA19 mice the DBP was elevated compared to both WT and HumCHGA31 (###, *** p= 0.00001). (b) The plasma concentration of the hypotensive CST peptide is inversely correlated with BP: Circulating CST was measured in the mouse plasma using a competitive ELISA that quantitates human CST and thus expression of the transgene in the “humanized CHGA mouse models. The HumCHGA31 mice exhibit normal BP, had almost twice as much CST as the hypertensive HumCHGA19 mice (** p< 0.007). (c) Heart weight (mg): body weight (g) ratio is not significantly different between both the transgenic strains