Fig. 8 ∣. Hepatic Aster deficiency disrupts systemic cholesterol homeostasis.

a, Plasma total cholesterol from 8-week-old F/F control and L-A/C KO mice fed a chow diet (n = 10 and 18). b, Cholesterol content of plasma lipoproteins fractionated by FPLC. c, Immunoblot analysis of hepatic ABCA1. Calnexin was used as a sample processing control (n = 5 and 5). d, Cholesterol efflux to ApoA-I by control and L-A/C KO primary hepatocytes (n = 3 and 3). e, Total adrenal [¹⁴C] radioactivity 3 d after [¹⁴C]-HDL administration (n = 8 and 5). Total adrenal [¹⁴C] counts are normalized per gram tissue and expressed relative to radioactivity in plasma 1 min after [¹⁴C]-HDL administration. f, Gross appearance of adrenal glands from representative 8-week-old F/F control and L-A/C KO mice (1 mm scale). g, Histological sections of the adrenal cortex stained with BODIPY from f. Data are representative of three independent samples. h,i, mRNA expression levels of the indicated genes in adrenal glands (h; n = 7 and 6) and brown adipose tissue (i, n = 7 and 7) from F/F control and L-A/C KO mice. All data are presented as mean ± s.e.m. P values were determined by two-sided Student’s t-test (a,d,e) or two-sided Student’s t-test with Benjamini, Krieger and Yekutieli correction for multiple comparisons (h,i). *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, ****P < 0.0001, *****P < 0.00001.