Figure 1.

Tissue-specific IKK2 expression and brain region–specific higher tumor necrosis factor-$\mathrm{\alpha }$ $\left(\text{TNF}\mathrm{\alpha }\right)$ and interleukin (IL)-6 mRNA expression. (A) Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay of flox allele (F), wild-type allele (W), and deletion allele (D) according to genotype in 13-wk-old male mice. Lane 1: $\text{IKK}{2}^{\text{flox}/+}$; Lane 2, $\text{Nestin}-\text{creIKK}{2}^{+/+}$; Lanes 3–5, $\text{Nestin}-\text{creIKK}{2}^{\text{flox}/\text{flox}}$ ($\text{IKK}{2}^{\text{Neu}-\text{KO}}$); Lanes 6–8, $\text{Nestin}-\text{creIKK}{2}^{\text{flox}/+}$ (control); Lane 9, marker. (B–C) Representative Western blot (B) and $\text{mean}\pm \text{standard}\text{deviation}\left(\text{SD}\right)$ IKK2 protein expression in brain, fat, lung, and heart tissues from male control ($n=8$) and $\text{IKK}{2}^{\text{Neu}-\text{KO}}$ ($n=7$) mice at 10–16 wk of age. *$p<0.05$ vs. control, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). (D–K) $\text{TNF}\mathrm{\alpha }$ and IL-6 mRNA expression in hypothalamus, hippocampus, cortex, and olfactory bulb tissues harvested from control and $\text{IKK}{2}^{\text{Neu}-\text{KO}}$ mice ($n=6-7/\text{group}$) at 8–12 wk of age following 4 mo of exposure to concentrated ambient particulate matter ${\left(\mathrm{PM}\right)}_{2.5}$ (CAP) or filtered air (FA). *$p<0.05$ vs. FA, ^#$p<0.05$ vs. control, ANOVA.