Culturing and Treating MIN6 Cells

The MIN6 cells were a gift from Dr. Junichi Miyazaki (Osaka University Medical School, Osaka, Japan). They were grown and maintained as described previously28 (link)36 (link). Briefly, cells were plated on 6 well cell culture dishes (Corning) at a density of 0.8 × 10⁶ cells per well. The cell culture medium was composed of DMEM (Invitrogen) supplemented with 15% heat inactivated FBS (Hyclone), 100 U/ml penicillin, 100 μg/ml streptomycin (Invitrogen), 2 mmole/l glutamine (Invitrogen) and 50 μM beta mercaptoethanol (Invitrogen). Cells between passages 28 and 35 were used for the experiments. Cells were grown at 5% CO₂ and 37 °C. Culture medium was exchanged at 48 hours following cell seeding. At that time, 1.0 μmole/l CdCl₂ or vehicle (PBS) were added.