Alcohol Activates TGF-Beta but Inhibits BMP Receptor-Mediated Smad Signaling and Smad4 Binding to Hepcidin Promoter in the Liver
Figure 2
TGF-β Expression. The fixed liver sections of mice fed with regular (a) or ethanol-containing (b) Lieber-De Carli liquid diets were immunostained with an anti-TGF-β antibody, as described in Materials and Methods. Liver sections from mice injected (i.p.) with sunflower oil, as control (c) or carbon tetrachloride (d) for 8 weeks were also immunostained with the anti-TGF-β antibody to serve as positive controls for TGF-β staining. The arrows indicate TGF-β expression (b, d) (original magnification 20X). Whole cell lysates isolated from the livers of mice fed with regular (control) or ethanol-containing (alcohol) Lieber-De Carli liquid diets were employed to determine TGF-β protein expression by western blotting, as described in Materials and Methods (e). An anti-gapdh antibody was employed to confirm equal protein loading (f). TGF-β protein expression, normalized to gapdh, in alcohol-treated mice was expressed as fold expression of that in control mice and was quantified by scanning autoradiographs by a densitometer (g).
