Fig. 7.

Islets from female offspring of obese dams may be protected from dysfunction by increased ERα and reduced susceptibility to apoptosis. (a, b) Western blot analysis of ERα (a) and cleaved caspase-3 (b) protein abundance; images of corresponding western blots are in ESM Fig. 1g, h, respectively. (c, d) qRT-PCR analysis of Casp3 (c) and Casp9 (d) mRNA expression in male and female offspring. (e) Western blot analysis of BAX:Bcl-2 ratio; images of corresponding western blots are in ESM Fig. 1i (BAX) and ESM Fig. 1j (Bcl-2). Experiments were performed on islets isolated from 8-week-old male and female offspring of control and obese dams. Males and females were analysed independently by unpaired Student’s t test (control vs obese). *p < 0.05, as shown. (a) Males, control: n = 7, obese: n = 5 mice; females, control: n = 6, obese: n = 5 mice; (b) males, n = 5 mice/group; females, control: n = 6, obese: n = 4 mice; (c, d) males, control: n = 5, obese: n = 6 mice; females, control: n = 9, obese: n = 7 mice; (e) BAX: males, n = 5 mice/group; females, control: n = 5, obese: n = 4 mice; Bcl-2: males and females, control: n = 5, obese: n = 4 mice. ‘n’ represents the number of mice from separate litters. All data are mean ± SEM