Fig. 5.

Stimulation of the gut microbiota by GG is associated with enhanced hepatic fibrogenesis. Representative pictures of liver sections stained for collagen using fast green FCF/Sirius red F3B (A) and hepatic stellate cell activation using an antibody against αSMA (B). C: The 4-hydroxyproline content in the liver. D: Heat map showing significant changes in expression of genes involved in hepatic fibrosis/hepatic stellate cell activation in the livers of CTRL and GG mice. The Log2 expression signals of the CTRL group were arbitrarily set at zero. E: Relative expression of fibrosis-related genes in the liver. Gene expression levels in CTRL mice were set at one. Data are presented as mean ± SEM. Asterisks indicate significantly different compared with CTRL. *P < 0.05. F: TIMP1 protein expression measured by Western blotting. HSP90 was used as loading control.