Figure 5. SM activity is preserved during hypoxia.

Huh7 cells were labelled with 2 µCi [¹⁴C]-acetate and incubated under normoxic or hypoxic conditions for the indicated times. Synthesis of [¹⁴C]-squalene, [¹⁴C]-lanosterol, and [¹⁴C]-cholesterol was determined using thin-layer chromatography. Double-headed arrows indicate multiple enzymatic steps, and arrowhead on right of image indicates band corresponding to the SM product [¹⁴C]-monooxidosqualene (Capell-Hattam et al., 2022). Graphs depict densitometric quantification of [¹⁴C]-cholesterol and [¹⁴C]-lanosterol levels normalized to the conditions with the greatest abundance of each analyte, which were set to 1 (dotted line). Data presented as mean ± SEM from n=3 independent experiments (*, p≤0.05; two-tailed ratio paired t-test vs. respective normoxic condition for each timepoint).