Figure 1.

Induction of diabetic pregnancies in wild type and Alx3-deficient mice. (A) Basal blood glucose concentrations after fasting in wild-type (n = 27) and Alx3-deficient (n = 38) female mice. **P < 0.01, Student’s t-test. (B) Glucose tolerance tests carried out in fasting wild-type (left panel, blue, n = 21) or Alx3-deficient (right panel, red, n = 19) female mice. Both non-pregnant (clear squares) and pregnant mice (solid squares) at 8.5 days post coitus were tested. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01 relative to non pregnant wild type animals at each time point (ANOVA followed by Bonferroni transformation). No statistically significant differences were found between pregnant and non-pregnant Alx3-null females. (C) Blood glucose concentrations after fasting in wild type (white circles, n = 22) and Alx3-deficient (black circles, n = 43) female mice. Injections of streptozotocin (STZ) and subcutaneous implantation of insulin pellets (Ins) are indicated by arrows. Note that severe hyperglycaemia develops again during pregnancy up to 10.5 days of gestation. (D) Number of embryos per litter observed in non-diabetic (ND) or diabetic (D) pregnancies at 10.5 days of gestation. The numbers of litters were: Alx3 ^+/+, 20 (ND) and 15 (D); Alx3 ^−/−, 19 (ND) and 29 (D). Pregnancies without any embryos were not counted for litter size calculations. *p < 0.05; **P < 0.01, Student’s t-test. All values represent mean $\underset{-}{+}$ s.e.m.