Figure 2.

Blood pressure associated variants affect NPR3 expression in human VSMCs. For all panels, ‘E’ stands for the BP-elevating allele for each SNP, ‘L’ denotes the BP-lowering allele for each SNP. (A) Relative mRNA levels of NPR3 in VSMCs was determined by quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction and standardized against the reference gene 18S. Mean±SEM, **P <0.01. (B) The relative peak heights of two alleles of the 3′ UTR SNP rs1173756 (r²=0.78 with lead SNP rs1173771) in sequencing chromatograms from genomic DNA and complementary DNA (cDNA) of VSMCs. Mean±SEM, **P <0.01. (C) A representative image of western blot analysis of NPR-C protein in VSMCs with β-actin as a loading control, Mean±SEM, *P <0.05.