A

Iron from the intestinal lumen is taken up across the apical (brush-border) membrane of enterocytes by the Divalent Metal Transporter-1 (DMT-1); ferroportin exports iron basolaterally, transferrin carries iron in plasma, and hepcidin is a regulatory peptide that blocks ferroportin. Thus, DMT-1 mediates the entry step [Sharp, 2002, PMID 11755534; Mackenzie & Garrick, 2005, PMID 16286504].