Fig. 5

Effect of follistatin treatment on AKT-Thr308 phosphorylation levels in early bovine embryos. Presumptive zygotes were cultured with 0 or 10 ng/ml recombinant human follistatin in the presence or absence of AKT inhibitor IV (3.5 μM) for 10 h (n = 5 replicates, n = 20 zygotes/group) (a), or Presumptive zygotes were cultured in the presence or absence of 10 ng/ml follistatin for 24 h (n = 5 replicates, n = 20 zygotes/group) (b). Samples were subjected to Western blot analysis for pAKT-Thr308, tAKT and Actin. Expression levels were normalized to the abundance of an endogenous control actin. Phosphorylation level was expressed as pAKT/tAKT. Data are expressed as mean ± standard error. Values with different superscripts among treatments indicate significant differences (P < 0.05). Representative Western blots are shown