Fig. 4.

Central pharmacological activation of SIRT1 delays pubertal timing. Indices of somatic/pubertal maturation in immature female rats following central, pharmacological SIRT1 activation by the allosteric SIRT1-activator, SA3, are shown. a Body weight of controls (C; white bars) and SA3-treated (bars in violet) rats. b Cumulative percent of C and SA3-treated rats showing vaginal opening (VO). c Histological score of follicular development/ovulation and representative images of ovarian maturation; CL: corpus luteum, F: follicle. d Uterine weight. e Serum LH levels. f Hypothalamic SIRT1 content. g Hypothalamic H3K9/14Ac content. h Kiss1 mRNA levels. The bar histograms represent the mean ± SEM. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01 (two-sided Student’s t test). For protein analyses in panels f and g, three representative bands per group, run in the same original western blots are presented. The scale bar in panel c corresponds to 600 μm. Total group sizes were: C = 10 and SA3 = 10; while phenotypic and hormonal parameters were assayed in the whole groups (in the case of LH levels, for all serum samples that were available), hypothalamic protein (f, g) and RNA (h) analyses were conducted in a representative subset of randomly assigned samples from each group, with the following distribution: C: n = 6−8 (protein and RNA, respectively); SA3: n = 6