Iron deficiency is one of the most common nutritional disorders worldwide. It is especially serious during pregnancy with serious health consequences for both the mother and her developing fetus. In humans these include fetal growth retardation, impaired cognitive development and premature birth. In rats, the pups born to iron deficient mothers are smaller, with changes in liver and heart size. As adults, the offspring develop hypertension and obesity. Why these changes occur is not clear. One possible hypothesis is that iron deficiency changes the cell membrane. I aimed to investigate this hypothesis, using an in-house iron deficient maternal rat model, designed by our group, additionally I have designed an iron deficient human liver hepatoma cell line model (HepG2). The effect of iron deficiency on maternal and neonatal erythrocytes membranes was tested. Iron deficiency significantly increased the mothers’ erythrocytes sensitivity to low osmotic pressure. In contrast, the neonates’ erythrocytes sensitivity was not affected by iron deficiency. The effect of iron deficiency on membrane protein profile was also studied in maternal and neonatal liver total membrane proteins, using proteomics analysis. Mitochondrial proteins were the most affected, especially in neonates. Whole cell patch clamp recording was used to study the effect of iron deficiency on the membranes’ electrophysiological properties. HepG2 cells had linear current-voltage relationships between -130 and +60 mV. Furthermore iron deficiency reduced the membranes’ input resistance reflected by an increase in holding current and in slope conductance. These changes were not reversed by K+ channel blockers (Ba2+ and quinine) suggesting no change in K+ channel protein expression. Interestingly and unexpectedly it increased the change in conductance, Sr2+ had a similar effect. Therefore iron deficient membranes had increased permeabilit
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:577623 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Mossa-Al Hashimi, Lina |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=201649 |
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