At 24 h after LPS injection, rats were killed with an overdose of anesthesia, and the eyes were immediately enucleated. The ICB complex was carefully isolated under a surgical microscope. Total ICB RNA was extracted from tissues using TRIzol (Invitrogen, Paisley, UK) following the manufacturer’s instructions. RNA concentrations were tested using a Nano instrument (NanoDrop Technologies, Wilmington, DE). In addition, cDNA was generated using the PrimeScript® RT reagent Kit (Takara Biotechnology, Dalian, China) according to the manufacturer’s instructions [19 (link)]. Real-time quantitative PCR was performed on Applied Biosystems Prism 7500 (Life Technologies Co., CA). Samples underwent 40 cycles of amplification in a volume of 20 µl using the all-in-one qPCR Mix (GeneCopoeia Inc., Rockville, MD). The conditions were 95 °C for 10 min, followed by 40 cycles of 10 s at 95 °C, 20 s at 60 °C and 15 s at 72 °C. Primers used to analyze TNF-α, IL-1β, iNOS, COX-2, NF-κB p65, and GAPDH expressions are summarized in Table 2. The relative amount of target mRNA was calculated from the obtained ΔCt values for the target and endogenous reference gene GAPDH using the 2-ΔΔCt cycle threshold method. All samples were analyzed in triplicate (n = 4 per group).