Figure 3. Autophagy activity in the scrapie-infected cell line SMB-S15.

(a) Western blots of LC3 and SQSTM1 in SMB cells. LC3-I, LC3-II and SQSTM1 are shown on the left. The results of the quantitative analysis of the gray values of the LC3-II and SQSTM1 blots in SMB-S15 cells and control SMB-PS cells are shown on the right. The average relative gray value was calculated from three independent blots and expressed as the mean ± SD. All of the gels were run under the experimental conditions detailed in the Methods section. Full-length blots were cropped for final display. (b) Western blot of LC3 in SMB cells in the presence or absence of NH₄Cl. The average relative gray value was calculated from three independent blots and expressed as the mean ± SD. (c) Representative confocal microscopy images of SMB cells double-stained for LC3 and PrP. The PrP (red), LC3 (green), DAPI (blue) and merged images are indicated on the top. The magnification view of merged graph of SMB-S15 cells is shown on the left. Scale bar = 20 μm.