Fig. 3.

Transgenic SIRT1 excess in female mice delays pubertal timing. SIRT1 content and indices of somatic/pubertal maturation in a transgenic model of moderate Sirt1 overexpression (Tg; cyan bars) and wild-type (WT; white bars) controls measured at PND32 are shown. a Body weight. b Hypothalamic SIRT1 content. c Hypothalamic H3K9/14Ac content. d Hypothalamic Kiss1 mRNA levels. e Cumulative percent of animals showing vaginal opening (VO). f Histological score of follicular development/ovulation and representative images of ovarian maturation; CL: corpus luteum, F3: stage-3 follicle; released oocytes are denoted by arrows in the inset. g Plasma LH levels. The bar histograms represent the mean ± SEM. *p < 0.05; ***p < 0.001 (two-sided Student’s t test). For protein analyses in panels b and c, three representative bands per group, run in the same original western blots, are presented. The scale bars correspond to 600 μm in panel f, and 200 μm in the inset. Total group sizes were: WT = 10 and TG = 8; while phenotypic parameters (BW) were assayed in the whole groups, molecular and hormonal analyses were conducted in a representative subset of randomly assigned samples from each group (n = 5), which were euthanized at the time of puberty. Note that due to a technical loss in serum samples, determinations in e were n = 4 per group