Figure 4. Effect of diabetes on expression of the kainate receptor subunits. qRT-PCR analysis was performed on cDNA isolated from control and STZ-induced diabetic rat retinas after 4 and 12 weeks. Expression of each gene was normalized to acidic ribosomal phosphoprotein (P0) for each rat (A), and then scaled to the 4-week control rats for each gene (B; mean ± SEM). Compared to the age-matched control rats, the 12-week diabetic rats had significantly reduced mRNA levels of all the kainate receptor subunits (*, p<0.05; **, p<0.01; ***, p<0.005).