Fig. 9

A single intranigral injection of BSSG triggers a bilateral and progressive increase of active caspase-3 immunoreactivity in the SNpc. a Representative merged micrographs of double immunostaining against active caspase-3 (green) and TH (red) at the time displayed at the left margin in every row. The scale bar = 50 μm is common for all micrographs. b The graphs show IFAD of the conditions in panel a. The bars stand for the mean ± S.E.M. calculated from the measurements in three anatomical levels. n = 3 independent rats per time point in the BSSG group; n = 6 for Mock and UT groups. *, BSSG group compared with the control groups. When compared with the BSSG effect over time, & vs. 60 and Ω vs. 120 days after the lesion. Two-way ANOVA, Bonferroni post-test. p < 0.05. c Confocal analysis of double immunostaining with cleaved caspase-3 (green) and TH (red); d cleaved caspase-3 (green), GFAP (red) and nuclear counterstaining (blue); e Iba1 (green), cleaved caspase-3 (red) and nuclear counterstaining (blue). The top left and bottom right panels correspond to the orthogonal projections from 1-μm z-confocal optical sections. The top right panels are the integrated images, and the bottom left panels are horizontal optical Z-sections