Figure 2.

Autophagy is required for eccentric exercise. (A) Representative immunoblots and quantification histograms for MAP1LC3A and SQSTM1 proteins on muscle extracts from inducible atg7^f/f mice before and after eccentric exercise (n = 7 each conditions). (B and C) Histograms showing the mean maximum distance ran to exhaustion by atg7^f/f and atg7^−/− females and males (B) during an acute bout of eccentric exercise (n = 10 males each genotype and n = 10 females each genotype, *P < 0.05), (C) during 3 consecutive d of eccentric exercise (n = 10 males each genotype and n = 10 females each genotype, **P < 0.01; *P < 0.05). (D) Representative hematoxylin and eosin staining of tibialis anterior (TA) muscle cross sections from exercised atg7^f/f and atg7^−/− animals. No major morphological alterations such as inflammation, center-nucleated fibers are present in exercised muscles of both genotypes. (E) Representative images of IgG staining of cross-sections from exercised TA of atg7^f/f and atg7^−/− mice. No significant membrane permeabilization was found in either genotype after 3 d of eccentric exercise.