Figure 6.

Resistin regulates monolayer PAECs integrity by the LKB1/AMPK/mTOR pathway. Plasmids pCAGGS-LKB1 or pCAGGS-CaMKK2 were transfected into PAECs. 4 h after transfection, PAECs were treated with recombined resistin protein (0 nM) for another 2 h, and cells were then collected for qRT-PCR analysis (a, b) or western blot analysis (c, d). The empty vector was used as a negative control. The antibodies were diluted as previously described. β-actin served as a loading control, and the relative protein level was calculated with ImageJ software and normalized to β-actin. **p<0.01 compared with the untreated group, ^##p<0.01 compared with the resistin-treated group. Error bars represent the mean ± SEM (n = 3). (e) TEER measurement of PAECs was taken at 0, 6, 12, 24, 48, and 2 h after recombined resistin protein treatment (0 nM). TEER levels were displayed as a percentage of the TEER before treatment. **p<0.01 compared with the negative control group. Error bars represented the mean ± SEM (n = 3).