FIGURE 1

Glomerular TMEM14A expression was diminished before onset of proteinuria. (a) Urinary albumin excretion is significantly higher in Dahl rats compared to SHR from 6 weeks of age. Y‐axis shows urinary albumin excretion in mg/24 h, and the X‐axis shows animal age in weeks. (b) Glomerular TMEM14A mRNA expression in Dahl rats is significantly lower than in SHR controls at all time points. The Y‐axis shows mRNA expression as relative expression compared to Hprt1, and the X‐axis shows animal age in weeks. No correlation was observed between TMEM14A expression and urinary albumin excretion in both SHR (r = − 0.80, CI −0.98 to 0.27) and Dahl (r = −0.60, CI −0.97 to 0.60) using Pearson's correlation coefficient. (c) Glomerular staining for Tmem14a protein is lower in Dahl rats than in SHR after 2 weeks. This difference is significant at Weeks 4 and 8 of age. The columns represent mean semiquantitative score. Dahl rats develop proteinuria at 6 weeks of age. Thus, both mRNA and protein expression levels drop before onset of proteinuria. ANOVA with Tukey's post hoc analysis was used.(d–m) Representative images of glomeruli of spontaneously proteinuric Dahl (d–h) and SHR (i–m) rats at respectively 2 (d and i), 4 (e and j), 6 (f and k), 8 (g and l), and 10 (h and m) weeks of age. (a–c) Horizontal lines indicate mean with SD. Scale bar = 50 μm *p < 0.001.