Alcohol-induced Liver Injury in Ctgf Knockout Mice

All animal protocols were approved by the University of Florida Animal Care and Usage Committee and were conducted in compliance with their guidelines. Ctgf conditional knockouts (Ctgf^k/k) were previously published.^{14 (link),15 (link)} These mice carried two loxP sites flanking exon 4 of Ctgf (termed Ctgf^f) gene and one allele of the human ubiquitin C promoter (ubc)-Cre/ERT2 transgene. At 3-week-old age, Ctgf^f/f mice carrying ubc-Cre/ERT2 were given IP injection of the tamoxifen suspension (75 mg/kg body weight) over 5 days and the resulting Ctgf^k/k mice lost exon 4 of Ctgf in genotyping analysis using primers and PCR condition described previously.^{16 (link)} One month later, these mice were fed with the Lieber-DeCarli liquid diet (BioServ, Flemington, NJ) containing 1% ethanol for 2 days followed by 2% ethanol for 10 days. Carbon tetrachloride (CCl₄, 1 μL/g body weight) was injected through IP at 1 day before the end of experiment.