Fig. 1.

Leptin modulates autophagy via mTOR in BAF/3-hLepRb⁺ cells.

³H-thymidine incorporation in BAF/3-hLepRb⁺ cells stimulated with human leptin (0.01–10 ng/mL) in a dose response assay (A). Densitometric analysis of P-STAT3/STAT3 (B) and P-S6/S6 (C). Leptin (left panel) plus rapamycin (right panel) were used at 100 ng/mL and 100 nmol/L respectively at times shown in figures. BAF/3-hLepRb⁺ cells cultured in the presence or absence of leptin, were stained with monodansyl-cadaverine (MDC) and analyzed by flow cytometry (D). Autophagy levels were measured also by western blotting analysis and calculated as the ratio LC3-II/LC3-I. LC3-II was also normalized against actin. BAF/3-hLepRb⁺ cells were stimulated with leptin (left panel) plus rapamycin (right panel) at the same times and concentrations above described (E). The values shown represent the mean ± S.E.M. of at least three experiments one representative out of three independent experiments. ^⁎p < 0.05, ^⁎⁎p < 0.03.