Animals
Animal care and experimental protocols were approved by the Italian Ministry of Research. Animal studies are reported in compliance with the ARRIVE 2.0 guidelines (Kilkenny et al., 2010) and with the recommendations made by the British Journal of Pharmacology(Lilley et al., 2020). The experiments were designed based on the 3R principles of replacement, refinement and reduction. Animals were allowed to food and water access ad libitum and kept in temperature-controlled facilities on a 12-hour light and dark cycle. C57BL/6J mice were supplied by Charles River Laboratories. ARE-luc2 reporter mice were generated by Paolo Ciana, as already reported (Rizzi et al., 2018). ERαKO female mice were obtained from P. Chambon, IGBMC, Strasbourg, France. RosaTdTomato mice (#B6.Cg-Gt(ROSA)26Sortm9(CAG-tdTomato)Hze/J, #007909) carrying the ubiquitous expression of the red fluorescent protein Td-Tomato were obtained from The Jackson Lab (The Jackson Laboratory, BarHarbor, Maine, USA); heterozygous mice were used in our study, obtained by crossing RosaTdTomato with C57BL/6J mice. Only female mice of all mice models were used in the present study and sacrificed at 4 months of age by carbon dioxide inhalation.