Fig. 5

BenSer reduces intracellular amino acid concentrations and activates amino acid response signalling pathways. a, intracellular levels of alanine, glycine, asparagine, aspartate, valine, leucine, isoleucine, methionine, threonine, phenylalanine, tyrosine, serine, glutamine and cysteine were measured in MCF-7, HCC1806 and MDA-MB-231 (MDA-231) cells after 14 h incubation in the presence or absence of 10 mM BenSer. Data are normalised to cellular protein content and expressed as a fold-change compared to Control. Data represent mean ± SEM of two independent experiments performed in triplicate. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, ****p < 0.0001; unpaired student’s t-test. b, levels of ATF4 (49 kDa) protein detected by Western blotting in MCF-7, HCC1806 and MDA-MB-231 cells cultured in the presence or absence of 10 mM BenSer for 6 h. Cells cultured in glutamine-free (Gln-) media were included in all blots as a positive control and GAPDH (37 kDa) was used as a loading control. Data in (b) are representative blots from at least three independent experiments