Figure 3

The effect of caloric restriction on CD8+ T cell chemokine receptor expression in aging. Ribonuclease protection assays (RPAs) were done using RNA from freshly isolated splenic CD8+ T cells from young (3–4 months), old (18–20 months), and caloric restricted old (18–20 months) mice in groups of 5 animals. Density of the bands was quantified using a phosphoimager. (A) Histogram showing the composite data of 4 experiments (total 20 animals in each condition). The results represent the mean ± SEM of the relative CD8+ T cell chemokine receptor gene expression level of old and old caloric restricted mice compared to those from the young cohort (arbitrarily defined as equal to 1). (B) CCR7 expression was also determined using a custom CCR7 RPA probe. The left panel is a representative autoradiograph (lane 1 = young CD8+ T cells; lane 2 = old CD8+ T cells; lane 3 = caloric restricted old CD8+ T cells). The right panel represents the composite data of 3 RPAs with a total of 15 animals in each group. Results are presented as mean ± SEM. CR = caloric restricted. Gel loading is corrected with L32 expression.