Fig. 5

Hepatic steatosis and generation of different ceramide species in mice injected with different HBV plasmids. A Experiment scheme. All mice were sacrificed at their 14 weeks old. n = 5–7. B HBsAg detected in sera and in liver tissues of the mice 1 week after plasmid injection; each dot indicates one mouse. n = 3. C Ratios of liver weight to body weight of the mice fed different diets; each dot indicates one mouse. n = 5–7. D Representative images of H&E staining (upper), Oil red O staining (middle) and CD45 IHC staining (lower) of the indicated mouse liver sections. The others are in Additional file 1: Fig. S11. T, tumour; N, non-tumour. Bar graphs show the proportions of steatosis and the density of CD45-positive cells in each group. E From each group, 3 mice were removed and their tumour-free liver tissues were collected. Transcriptional levels of CerS2, CerS6 and Degs1 (upper panel) were determined by qRT-PCR. The amounts of C16:0 ceramide and C22-24 ceramides with different diets (low panel) were quantified by HPLC-MS/MS. Shown are changed fold (mean ± SEM) relative to the uninfected mice with NC diet. The differences were compared with one-way ANOVA. n.s. no statistical difference; ^$P < 0.05, ^$$P < 0.01, ^$$$P < 0.001 between Ref-HBV and empty-vector; *P < 0.05, **P< 0.01, ***P < 0.001 between Ref-HBV and mtPreS1 or mtPreS2. No statistical difference was observed between mtPreS1 and mtPreS2