Western blotting for BDNF, TrkB, Bax, and Bcl-2

Western blotting for the determination of Bax, Bcl-2, BDNF, TrkB was conducted as previously described method (Park et al., 2019; Song et al., 2018). The hippocampus tissues were homogenized on ice and lysed in a lysis buffer containing 50 mM Tris-HCl (pH, 7.5), 150 mM NaCl, 0.5% deoxycholic acid, 1% Nonidet P40, 0.1% sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), 1 mM phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride, and 100-mg/mL leupeptin. Protein content was measured using a Bio-Rad colorimetric protein assay kit (Bio-Rad, Hercules, CA, USA). Protein of 30 μg was separated on SDS-polyacrylamide gels and transferred onto a nitrocellulose membrane, which was incubated with mouse β-actin antibody (1:1,000; Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Santa Cruz, CA, USA), mouse Bax (1:1,000; Santa Cruz Biotechnology), Bcl-2 (1:1,000; Santa Cruz Biotechnology), and rabbit BDNF (1:1,000; Santa Cruz Bio-technology), TrkB (1:1,000; Santa Cruz Biotechnology). Horseradish peroxidase-conjugated anti-mouse for β-actin, Bax, Bcl-2 and anti-rabbit for BDNF, TrkB were used as secondary antibodies.