Stegodyphus lineatus
The act of reproduction, regarding the female, leads to an increase of digestive enzymes. This allows her to eat more prey and to stock more nutrients. The digestive enzymes then start to digest the inside of the organism itself, except for the heart, guts, and mostly the ovaries. Once the offspring are born, and until the mother dies, the mother regurgitates for two weeks the fluids stocked inside as highly nutritive food for the progeny. Ninety-five per cent of the mother's mass is digested by the offspring. They will grow to three times their original size between their birth and dispersion. During the period when female spiders are caring for their hatched offspring, the mothers do not eat, and their offspring only eat the food that the mother regurgitates along with the mother's body at the end of this time.
Human iron metabolism
Like most mineral nutrients, the majority of the iron absorbed from digested food or supplements is absorbed in the duodenum by enterocytes of the duodenal lining. These cells have special molecules that allow them to move iron into the body. To be absorbed, dietary iron can be absorbed as part of a protein such as heme protein or iron must be in its ferrous Fe form. A ferric reductase enzyme on the enterocytes’ brush border, duodenal cytochrome B (Dcytb), reduces ferric Fe to Fe. A protein called divalent metal transporter 1 (DMT1), which can transport several divalent metals across the plasma membrane, then transports iron across the enterocyte’s cell membrane into the cell. It the iron is bound to Heme it is instead transported across the apical membrane by Heme carrier protein 1 (HCP1).