Spleen histology and iron staining. (A) Spleen histology and Perl staining of 5-month-old KI mice compared with aged-matched controls (WT) and 11-month-old KO animals. A Motic BA300 microscope (Mikron Instrument; original magnification ×200) was used with DPX mounting medium and a DPlanApo 20 UV PL, 20×/0.7 NA dry objective (Olympus), captured with a DFC320 (Leica) camera using Leica application suite Version 2.8.1, and processed using Photoshop Version 7.0 (Adobe Systems). (B) SIC in the 3 mouse models at 10 weeks of age. SIC was measured on at least 5 animals for each strain. ***P < .001 versus WT. Bars represent SD in the analyzed animals group.