Figure 3

Over-expression of caveolin-1 induces apoptosis of GH3 cells. (A) GH3 cells were transfected with pcDNA4-Caveolin-1 for 48 hours then subjected to TUNEL assays. Cells transiently expressing exogenous caveolin-1 (indicated by arrowheads) showed shrunken morphologies (a and b) and nuclear fragmentation when stained with Hoechst 33342 dye (c) and were positively fluorescence-labeled by TUNEL assay (d). Cells directly treated with DNase I (e, f) or vehicle (g, h) were TUNEL positive (f) or negative (h), respectively. Nuclei stained with Hoechst 33342 dye are shown in c, e and g. (B) Caveolin-1 elicited apoptosis of GH3 cells. GH3 cells were transfected with pcDNA4-caveolin-1, pcDNA4-EGFP or vehicle (null treatment) and subjected to immunocytochemical staining 24 and 48 hours after transfection. Three hundred cells were randomly chosen and counted in each experiment (vehicle, caveolin-1 or EGFP) to determine the percentage with fragmented nuclei after Hoechst 33342 dye labeling. Apoptotic cells were measured by fluorescence labeling and data were expressed as mean ± standard deviation from n = 3 independent experiments (angular transformed for analysis, back-transformed for presentation). The standard deviations are too small to observe in the 48 hours data. **P < 0.01 and *P < 0.05 versus EGFP or vehicle experiment.