AICAR up-regulates cardiac antioxidant programs. A) Gene-specific expression of a subset of genes is shown relative to WT + saline controls for antioxidant genes from RNA sequencing analyses of total hearts before TAC. B) qRT-PCR on total heart RNA from pre-TAC hearts normalized to Rpl32 expression. n = 3–4. C) Immunoblotting in total heart lysates before TAC (3 hearts pooled/sample). Total protein or GAPDH was used for normalization, as indicated. D) Total peroxidase activity measured using Amplex Red in total hearts before TAC; n = 4 (WT + saline and WT + AICAR), 3 (CKO + saline), and 6 (CKO + AICAR). E) GSH:GSSG ratios measured in total heart lysates before TAC. n = 3 (WT + saline, WT + AICAR, and CKO + saline) and n = 4 (CKO + AICAR). Results are presented as the means ± sem analyzed by 2-way ANOVA with multiple comparisons and with a Tukey’s post hoc analysis. An asterisk (*) indicates comparison to WT + saline, whereas as a plus (+) indicates comparison to SRC-2–CKO + saline. *P ≤ 0.05, **P ≤ 0.01, ***P ≤ 0.001, +P ≤ 0.05, ++P ≤ 0.01.