It has been reported that an increase in extracellular heme activates NLRP3 expression, triggering inflammasome activation [28].
Upon degradation of RBCs in the erythrophagosome, heme is imported into the cytoplasm for degradation by the heme-degrading enzyme heme oxygenase-1 (HMOX1) [7].
Expression of zebrafish hrg1a and hrg1b rescued growth of hem1Δ yeast at heme concentrations as low as 0.25 μM, comparable to the established heme transporters CeHRG-4 and CeHRG-1, demonstrating that Hrg1a and Hrg1b are heme transporters (Fig 1G) [10].
We show that the zebrafish kidney is the primary organ for heme-iron recycling during EP and that zebrafish Hrg1a and Hrg1b are heme transporters that are expressed and upregulated in kidney macrophages after PHZ-induced hemolysis.
When RBCs become senescent or the number of damaged RBCs increases in the circulation, macrophages from the reticuloendothelial system (RES, spleen and liver) contribute to RBC clearance and subsequently promote heme-iron recycling through erythrophagocytosis (EP).
HRG1 mRNA is upregulated during erythrophagocytosis (EP) in mouse bone marrow derived macrophages (BMDMs) and HRG1 protein is strongly expressed in macrophages of the reticuloendothelial system (RES) and specifically localizes to the phagolysosomal membranes [11].
Our results show that hamp1 levels are significantly elevated in the presence of PHZ but is equivalent in both, WT and DKO fish (S6 Fig).
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If you find BEL Commons useful in your work, please consider citing: Hoyt, C. T., Domingo-Fernández, D., & Hofmann-Apitius, M. (2018). BEL Commons: an environment for exploration and analysis of networks encoded in Biological Expression Language. Database, 2018(3), 1–11.