Figure 1.

Bnip3 is a potent inducer of autophagy in adult cardiac myocytes. (A) Adult cardiac myocytes were infected with adenoviruses encoding β-gal or Bnip3 plus GFP-LC3 for 24 hours and then stained with LysoTracker Red. Live cells were examined by fluorescence microscopy. Merged image shows co-localization between autophagosomes and lysosomes (yellow). (B) Quantitation of autophagy (n = 3). (C) Western blot analysis of LC3-I and LC3-II levels in myocytes overexpressing Bnip3. (D) Bnip3 increased autophagy in a dose-dependent manner when overexpressed at increasing multiples of infection (MOI) (n = 3, *p < 0.05 compared to 0 MOI of Ad-Bnip3). Overexpression of Bnip3 was verified by western blotting.