Fig. 4.

R-III-mediated lipid droplet formation correlates with reduction of RA in HSCs. (A, B) HSCs after passage 2 were either transfected with expression plasmids for His-tagged albumin or R-III, or treated with purified R-III [0.15 μM, R-III(p)], and the levels of all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) from whole-cell extracts were measured by reverse-phase-HPLC (A). Cell lysates of treated HSCs were studied for RAE-1 by Western blot analysis (B). (C, D) HSCs at 2 days after plating were continuously treated for 9 days with R-III (0.15 μM) and subjected to oil red O staining (C) and Western blotting (D). R-III-treated cells retain fat-storing phenotype.