Eisenaufnahme in Astroglia-reichen Primärkulturen

Fe is essential for the normal functioning of cells but can also generate toxic reactive oxygen species. The metabolism of Fe has to be tightly regulated. Astrocytes are considered to play an important role in Fe-homeostasis of the brain, yet the mechanisms involved in the uptake of Fe into astrocytes remain elusive. To investigate the uptake of Fe into astrocytes, I had applied FAC to rat astrocyte-rich primary cultures (APCs). The results of this thesis show that Fe-accumulationstudies in present of phosphat can lead to artefacts, because of the formation of Fe-precipitates. In serum and phosphat-free media APCs do accumulate Fe from FAC in a Tf-independent pathway, which follows a Michaelis-Menten-Kinetic that was found to be temperature-dependent and sensitive to the extracell. concentration of divalent cations. Further experimental results suggest that the here descript Fe-accumulation pathway is most likely independent form any known Fe-transporter reported in literature.