Fig. 1.

Reduction in prostate glands in PARP-1−/− mice due to decreased proliferative activity. (A) Reveals comparative hematoxylin and eosin staining of prostate tissue sections from PARP-1+/+ and PARP-1−/− of mice during development in early age (6, 8 and 12 weeks). (B) Shows the weights of the prostate glands (all lobes included, ventral, lateral, dorsal and anterior lobe) normalized to body weight from PARP+/+ and PARP−/− mice (6 weeks). (C) indicates the Ki-67 nuclear antigen immunoreactivity in prostate tissue from PARP-1+/+ and PARP-1−/− mice; magnification ×400. (D) Represents the quantitative analysis of the data from C. The number of proliferating cells based on Ki-67 positivity was used to determine the proliferative index as described in Materials and methods. Values indicate average from three independent groups ± standard error of the mean. (E) Reveals TUNEL staining for apoptosis detection in prostate tissue from PARP-1+/+ and PARP−/− mice (age 6, 8 and 12 weeks). (F) Indicates the quantitative analysis of TUNEL-positive cells per section with no significant differences between the two groups. Statistical significance (*) for all the data analyses was determined at a value of P < 0.05. Error bars represent standard error of the mean.