Fig. 3.

Effects of MeHg treatment and MRP1 downregulation on total Hg content, cell number, apoptosis, viability and cytotoxicity in HTR-8/SVneo cells. In a dose-dependent manner, MeHg exposure caused a an increase in cellular mercury content, b a decrease of cell number and c an increase of apoptosis relative to controls (w/o MeHg). In relation to controls (siPool) cell viability decreased (d) and cytotoxicity increased (e) after MeHg treatment in a dose-dependent manner. MRP1 knockdown intensified these effects. RLU: Relative Luminescence Unit; RFU: Relative Fluorescence Unit. The data represent mean values ± SD from three independent experiments, each performed in triplicates. a–c The letters A–G denote homogeneous subgroups derived from one-way ANOVA and S–N-K posthoc test (P < 0.05). d, e Asterisks denote significant differences between controls and MRP1 downregulated cells, *P < 0.05 from students t-test