Skip to main content
. 2015 May 1;10(5):e0124951. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0124951

Fig 1. TSH increased SREBP-2 protein levels and the expression of its target genes, HMGCR and HMGCS, in HepG2 cells.

Fig 1

(A) HepG2 cells were pretreated with TSH (4 μM) for 24 or 48 h. Whole cell lysates were subjected to Western blotting (WB) using an SREBP-2 antibody that recognizes both the SREBP-2 precursor and nuclear active forms. (P) and (N) denote the precursor and nuclear active forms of SREBP-2, respectively. (B-C) Densitometric quantifications of SREBP-2 (P) and SREBP-2 (N) are shown. Densitometry was performed using ImageJ (version 1.45) and normalized to β-actin. The data are presented as the mean ± SEM. *p< 0.05 versus zero concentration of TSH, # p < 0.05 versus TSH (24h). (D) HepG2 cells were treated with TSH (4 μM) for 24 or 48 h and then were harvested to monitor the mRNA expression of HMGCR and HMGCS. β-actin was used for normalization, and the control was set to 1 in the Real-Time PCR data. All the experiments were performed in duplicate. *p < 0.05 versus zero concentration of TSH.