Figure 5. Quantification of cell death. Percent cell death was determined with activated caspase 3 immunocytochemistry and TUNEL assay as described in Methods. The percentage cell death was reduced by approximately 80% in the presence of taurine or the gap junctional blocker octanol, (p<0.001, comparing taurine- or octanol-treated group means to respective cyC-only control means; ANOVA with Student-Newman-Keuls post hoc testing). The reduction in percentage cell death in the presence of taurine was statistically indistinguishable from that in the presence of octanol (p>0.05). Error bars depict SEM; n=4 for caspase activity and n=3 for the TUNEL assay. “casp 3” refers to activated caspase 3 immunocytochemistry and “cyC” refers to cyctochrome C.