Alcohol Activates TGF-Beta but Inhibits BMP Receptor-Mediated Smad Signaling and Smad4 Binding to Hepcidin Promoter in the Liver
Figure 4
Alcohol and BMP2, BMP4, BMP6 Expression. (a) cDNA was synthesized from liver RNA of mice fed with regular (control) or ethanol-containing (alcohol) Lieber-De Carli liquid diets, as described in Materials and Methods. It was employed in real-time PCR to detect bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) expression. The mRNA expression in alcohol-fed mice was expressed as fold of that in pair-fed control mice fed with regular diet (mean ± S.E.M.; , 4 mice per group). Asterisks indicate statistical significance (). The fixed liver sections of mice fed with regular (b) or ethanol-containing (c) Lieber-De Carli liquid diets were immunostained with an anti-BMP2 antibody, as described in Materials and Methods. The arrows indicate BMP2 expression (original magnification 20X).
