Table 1.
Phenotypic descriptors for the 7 Thoroughbred horses used in this study.
Table 2.
Specific anatomical descriptors used to locate the tissue collection points for the 6 visceral organs, 7 regionally discrete adipose tissue depots and 4 skeletal muscles sampled from horses used in the second objective.
Table 3.
Nucleotide sequences of primers and probes used in the current study.
Table 4.
RNA quality assessment by spectrophotometer (A260/A280 ratio) and 28S∶18S ratio (agarose gel electrophoresis and Chemi-Doc imaging and analysis) for post-mortem intervals from 5 to 360 minutes. n = 3.
Table 5.
Housekeeping gene comparison using GeNorm and Normfinder analysis.
Table 6.
RNA quality as assessed by spectrophotometry; average A260/A280 ratios from various tissues throughout the body.
Figure 1.
Gene expression of Myostatin, ActRIIB, Follistatin and Perilipin across a range of equine tissues as analysed by quantitative real-time PCR.
Data are presented as relative expression with respect to myocardial tissue. The geometric mean of the two most stable housekeeping genes as determined by GenNorm (HPRT1 and RPL32) was used for normalisation. Relative transcript abundance is shown for a) Myostatin, b) ActRIIB, c) Follistatin, and d) Perilipin. n = 4.
Figure 2.
Tissue-specific protein expression of Perilipin, ActRIIB and Myostatin across a range of equine tissues.
Protein expression of perilipin, ActRIIB and myostatin in a range of equine tissues was assessed by Western blot with total AKT used as a loading control. Four membranes were probed for each horse (2 for myostatin and AKT, and a further 2 for ActRIIB, perilipin and AKT) Representative blots are shown; n = 4. AKT loading controls are shown for each respective membrane.