Fig. 3

CRL females have smaller mammary glands with more dense TEBs at puberty. a Representative whole mount mammary glands from F2 and CRL females at puberty. Scale bar = 1 mm. Examples of TEBs are indicated by red arrows. b Quantification of three parameters of the female mammary gland, ductal area (left), number of TEBs (middle), and average TEB size (right). CRL females had smaller ductal trees, and fewer but larger TEBs compared to F2 females. *, p < 0.02. C) Linear regression analyses reveal positive associations between ductal area and number of TEBs in CRL females. However, there was little association between ductal area and number of TEBs in F2 females. For this reason, a polynomial regression was also performed (see dotted line), and this provided a much better fit for the CRL pubertal female data