Figure 1.

CD38 expression in rat pulmonary and systemic arteries. (A) Verification of the specificity of CD38 antibody in samples of pulmonary artery (PA), renal artery (RA), and cerebral artery (CA) with (right panel) and without (left panel) pretreatment of the antibody with a blocking peptide. (B) An immunoblot of CD38 from samples of aorta, PA, mesenteric (MA), RA, femoral (FA), tail (TA), CA, and pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells (PASMCs). (C) Averaged normalized CD38 protein level in various arteries using β-actin for normalization (n = 5). (D) Quantitative real-time RT-PCR analysis of CD38 mRNA expression in different vascular smooth muscle tissues. The data are normalized with 18S RNA (n = 5). a.u., arbitrary units.