Fig. 1.

Effect of iron deprivation and copper loading on Menkes copper ATPase (Atp7a) mRNA and protein expression in rat intestinal epithelial (IEC-6) cells. IEC-6 cells at 85% confluence were treated with deferoxamine (DFO), CuCl₂, or DFO + CuCl₂ (all at 200 μM) for 16 h. A: relative Atp7a mRNA expression levels. Values are means ± SD; n = 3. B: representative Atp7a immunoblot, with tubulin used as a constitutively expressed housekeeping protein for normalization. Atp7a bands are ∼180 kDa; tubulin bands are ∼55 kDa. C: quantitative data from 3 independent experiments. Values are means ± SD. Lower case letters (a, b, c) above bars indicate significance: bars sharing the same letter are not statistically different from one another; bars with different letters are statistically different from one another (P < 0.05 by ANOVA).