Fig 2: In vivo pharmacodynamics. C57BL/6J mice were feed with HFD for 8 weeks, followed with randomly allocated into four groups: model control group (MC), BBR-S group (BS, 50 mg kg-1 of BBR), empty micelle group (EM, same as BBR micelles) or BBR-CTA-Mic group (BM, 50 mg kg-1 of BBR), accompanied with HFD for another 8 weeks by gavage. Untreated mice fed with standard rodent diet (NC) were used as control. a Representative photographs of p-AMPK (pink), InsR (red) and LDLR (green) protein expression in liver tissue of different group mice were visualized using C2t Nikon fluorescent microscope (Morrell, USA) by probing with anti-InsR, LDLR and p-AMPK antibodies simultaneously. b The mRNA expression of AMPK, InsR, AKT, and LDLR genes was evaluated by RT-PCR. The results were normalized to GAPDH. c The protein expression of AMPK, p-AMPK, InsR, p-InsR, AKT, p-AKT, and LDLR was tested using western blot analysis. The results were normalized to GAPDH as density ratio. Data are presented as mean ± SEM (n = 10), *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, vs mice in MC group; #p < 0.05, ##p < 0.01, ###p < 0.001, vs mice in EM group, p-values were calculated by unpaired two-sided Student’s t-test. Scale bars, 200 µm (a)