“…It has previously been shown that hepatocellular uptake of microcystins is inhibited by bile salts and BSP Runnegar et al, 1995), suggesting that Oatps/OATPs could be involved in microcystin transport. Furthermore, several Oatps/OATPs that are expressed at the sinusoidal membrane of hepatocytes (Abe et al, 1999(Abe et al, , 2001Cattori et al, 2000;Hsiang et al, 1999;König et al, 2000aKönig et al, , 2000b are able to transport cyclic peptides such as the endothelin antagonist BQ-123, the opioid peptide [d-penicillamin 2,5] enkephalin, and the mushroom toxin phalloidin (Meier-Abt et al, 2004). Therefore, we tested these hepatic Oatps/OATPs in the X. laevis oocyte expression system and could demonstrate that rat Oatp1b2, human OATP1B1, and human OATP1B3 indeed mediate uptake of radiolabeled microcystin-LR (Fig.…”