(A) Total zinc content of wild-type, ttm-1(ok3503), cdf-2(tm788), and ttm-1(ok3503);cdf-2(tm788) animals analyzed by ICP-MS. Bars indicate average ± SEM of two independent experiments (ns, p>0.05, *p<0.05, ***p<0.005). The wild type and ttm-1(ok3503) data are the same as Figure 6A. (B) mRNA levels of mtl-1 (left) or mtl-2 (right) in animals cultured with no supplemental zinc determined by quantitative RT-PCR. The bars indicate the average ± SEM of three independent experiments. The mRNA level in WT animals was set equal to 1.0, and other samples were relative to that sample. ttm-1;cdf-2 double mutant animals displayed elevated levels of mtl-1 and mtl-2 mRNA compared to WT and single mutant animals in all three experiments, indicating this is a reproducible result. However, the combined data did not reach statistical significance at the level of p<0.05 because the values of the fold changes varied between the experiments.