separated by electrophoresis using Mini Protean system 3 Electrophoresis Cell
(Bio-Rad, Hercules, CA, USA). The proteins were transferred to a nitrocellulose
membrane system in the Mini Trans-Blot (Bio-Rad, Hercules, CA, USA). The
membrane was incubated with the primary antibody, which was a caspase-3 antibody
(Cell SignalingTechnology®) and BCL-2 (B cell lymphoma -2)
overnight. The membrane was washed and incubated with the secondary antibody
anti-IgG HRP (Cell SignalingTechnology®), for 2 h under
stirring. Immunodetection was performed using the chemiluminescence according to
the manufacturer's instructions (SuperSignal West Pico Chemiluminescent
Substrate, Thermo Scientific, USA). The nitrocellulose membranes were exposed to
X-ray films (X-Omat AR film) (Eastman Kodak Co., USA) in predetermined time
periods for each protein studied. The antibody used for normalization was GAPDH
(6C5) rabbit IgG (Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Inc., Europe) at a 1:5000 dilution.
Quantitative analyses of the blots were performed by Scion Image software (Scion
Corporation, Frederick, Maryland, USA), which is free software available at