Fig 4. Expression of retinoid biosynthetic genes in lungs of neonatal rats and adult-age rats fed VAM diet and treated with or without VARA.

Relative levels of mRNA transcripts are shown for Raldh-1 (A), Raldh-2 (B) and Raldh-3 (C) in lung, under experimental conditions described in Fig 1A. Data are shown as mean ± SEM, n ≥ 5/group. One-way ANOVA with post-hoc analysis was used to determine differences between oil-treated groups at different ages, indicative of differences due to ontogeny. Means without a common letter differ significantly, P < 0.05. For each age, VARA versus Oil groups were compared by t-test; * indicates P < 0.05. Abbreviations: P, postnatal day; VARA, vitamin A combined with 10% retinoic acid; Raldh, retinaldehyde dehydrogenase.