Fig. 4.
Northern blot analysis of RNA obtained from HUVEC exposed to laminar shear stress of 8 dynes/cm2 and to static conditions for 3 and 6 hours. After electrophoresis on agarose/formaldehyde gels, RNA was transferred to nylon membranes and hybridized sequentially with [α32P]-labeled vWF (top) and GAPDH (bottom) cDNA probes. The optical density of the autoradiography signals was quantitated using densitometric analysis and calculated as the ratio of vWF to GAPDH mRNA. The mRNA levels of laminar flow were calculated assuming optical density of static controls (unsheared cells) as a unit. As shown in the right side, the amount and integrity of RNA were checked by ethidium bromide staining.