Fig. 4

Exogenous neuregulin-1 effects on tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα) induced apoptosis in granulosa cells. Pregnant Mare Serum Gonadotropin (PMSG) primed GCs were isolated from two ovaries per rat per sample and grown in culture dishes. Thereafter, GCs were treated with TNFα (10 and 50 ng/ml) in the presence or absence of recombinant-NRG1 (100 ng/ml) in serum free media. A Representative live-cell images were taken under an inverted microscope at X200 magnification at 24 and 48 h post-treatment to represent the morphological changes of cells. B The bar graph represents the percentage of cells displaying nuclear morphologic changes during apoptosis. C Caspase-3/7 activity in GCs was measured as described in Material and methods. All bar graphs represent the mean ± SEM of three individual experiments. Asterisks (*) represent unpaired Student t-test, *p ≤ 0.01, **p ≤ 0.001, ***p ≤ 0.0001