Figure 4
Hepatic ERα activity. (A) Male wt/ C57Bl/6 mice, pre injected with 5 × 108 pfu Ad.LacZ, were injected with 8 × 108 pfu Ad.ERELuc. Five days later, the recipients were treated for 6 hours with increasing amounts of estrogen (0–50 μg/kg, s.c). Then, the mice were sacrificed, and the livers were processed for luciferase assays. Luciferase activity is expressed as relative luciferase units (RLU) per mg total liver protein. (B) Male C57Bl/6 mice (n = 5) were injected with Ad.ERE-Luc (5 × 108 pfu) plus Ad.Empty or Ad.shERα_1103 (3 × 109 pfu). Three or seven days post-infection, the mice were injected with 5 μg/kg estrogen. The (inset) photo shows the result of optical imaging of the bioluminescence at day three, the bar-diagram is a quantitative representation of hepatic luciferase activity at day three or day seven. (C) Male C57Bl/6 mice (n = 5) were co-injected with Ad.ERELuc (5 × 108 pfu) + Ad.Empty or Ad.shERα_1103 (3 × 109 pfu). Five days later, the mice received 0 or 5 μg/kg estrogen. After 6 hours, the animals were sacrificed, and hepatic luciferase activity was determined. Luciferase activity is expressed as relative luciferase units (RLU) per mg total liver protein. Data represented as mean ± SD.