Fig. 1.

α-syn expression induces catecholamine dependent cell death in PC12 cells. (A) Withdrawal of Dox for 3 or 7 days induces α-syn expression. Day 0 is the α-syn suppressed condition (2 µg/ml Dox). Top panel shows inducible expression of α-syn, and the bottom panel shows β-actin as a loading standard. (B) Withdrawal of Dox for 3 or 7 days decreases cell viability (MTT assay) to 72.5 and 56.6%, respectively. Simultaneous treatment with aMT (100 µM) abolishes the toxicity by α-syn and upregulates those viabilities to 81.8 and 99.2%, respectively, suggesting that α-syn-related toxicity is associated with catecholamine metabolism. Each column is an average of 6 independent experiments, and the bar means SE. Asterisk means statistically significance *p<0.01 vs CTL, **p<0.05, ***p<0.01, respectively (ANOVA).