Fig. 2.

Expression analysis of hypertrophic and fibrotic marker genes in the hearts of control and drug-treated Npr1 gene-targeted mice. mRNA expression of β-myosin heavy chain (β-MHC; A), α-skeletal actin (α-SKA; B), c-fos (C), c-jun (D), MMP-2 (E), MMP-9 (F), TIMP-1 (G), and TIMP-2 (H) in the heart tissue of control, retinoic acid (RA), sodium butyrate (SB) and hybrid (HB) drug-treated mice, normalized to GAPDH expression. Values are expressed as means ± SE (n = 6 animals in each group). Statistical significance expressed as $P < 0.05, $$P < 0.01 compared with 2-copy control; *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001 compared with vehicle-treated controls within the group.