Fig. 5

Protein-degradation gene expression in placental tissues of pregnant, Walker tumour-bearing rats and ascitic fluid-injected rats fed either a control or leucine-rich diet. Ubiquitin-proteasome pathway members, including the 20S subunit, represented by the PC2 (a) and PC5 (b) genes; muscle-ring finger protein 1 (MuRF-1) (c); ubiquitin ligase atrogin-1/MAFbx (d); ubiquitin (e); and a member of the calcium-dependent proteolytic pathway, calpain (f), were quantified in placental tissue using real-time PCR. Gene expression corrected by GAPDH as internal control. For additional details, see the Materials and Methods section. The results are expressed as the mean and standard error. Legend: Control (C), Leucine (L), Walker tumour-bearing rats (W), tumour-bearing rats fed a leucine-rich diet (WL), ascitic fluid-injected rats (A) and ascitic fluid-injected rats fed a leucine-rich diet (LA). * P < 0.05 accounted by tumour effect, two-way ANOVA with Bonferroni testing, n = 10