real-time PCR. Reactions were performed in the iQ5 real-time
PCR system (Bio-Rad). Each reaction (20 ll) contained 10 ll of
MAXIMA SYBR-green PCR Master mix (Fermentas), forward
(MANF:GCTGTTGTCAAAGATGCAGAAG) and reverse (MANR:
CTTGTACGGGAACGTAGTTGAG) primers (500 nM each), cDNA template,
and nuclease-free water. PCR cycling conditions were 10 min
at 95 C (1 cycle), 15 s at 95 C followed by 1 min at 60 C (40
cycles), and a melting curve of 1 min at 95 C followed by 30 s at
55 C with a final ramp to 95 C with continuous data collection
(1 cycle) to test for primer dimers and non-specific amplification.
The a-actin transcript was used as an internal reference to normalize
the amount of total RNA present in each reaction. The
expression levels of the genes were calculated from the threshold
cycle according to the 2DDCT method (Livak and Schmittgen,
2001). The experiment was conducted with three repetitions for
each sample and results were compared by one-way ANOVA with
Dunnett’s post test (a = 5%) to analyze the differences between
conditions related to controls using GraphPad Prism 5 for
Windows.
3.