Figure 1.

Effect of AICAR treatment on LX‐2 activation in the presence or absence of TGF‐β. (A) Verification of AMPK agonist AICAR on AMPK activation. Representative blots of LX‐2 treated with AICAR for 2 h at the indicated concentrations (0, 0.25, 0.5, 1 mm) are shown. p‐AMPK and AMPK were detected by the indicated antibodies using western blot. Quantification of p‐AMPK/AMPK ratio is shown in the right panel. **P < 0.01 vs control. (B) LX‐2 cells were treated with different concentrations of AICAR (0, 0.5, 1, 2 mm) in the presence or absence of TGF‐β. Western blots were performed with specific indicated antibodies, and data are presented as means ± SEM. Quantitative analyses of α‐SMA expression is shown in the lower panel. **P < 0.05 vs control, ^# P < 0.05 and ^## P < 0.01 vs TGF‐β group. GAPDH, glyceraldehyde 3‐phosphate dehydrogenase. (C) Representative fluorescence images of α‐SMA (gray) and DAPI (blue) in LX‐2 cells treated with AICAR (1 mm) in the presence or absence of TGF‐β (4 ng·mL⁻¹). Images taken at original magnification (upper panel) and their corresponding magnified images enclosed in white boxes are shown. Scale bar, 100 μm and 25 μm for upper and lower panel, respectively. Experiments were repeated three times.