Figure 1.

ConA induces autophagy in human hepatoma cells. (a) HuH-7 and Hep G2 cells were treated with the indicated doses of ConA for 24 h. Quantification of LC3 conversion is presented as the fold increase of LC3-II compared with the control cells after normalization to the corresponding β-actin levels (b) HuH-7 and Hep G2 cells were treated with or without ConA (20 μg/ml) for the indicated time points. LC3 conversion was determined using western blotting. (c) HuH-7 and Hep G2 transfected with ptfLC3 plasmid were treated with or without ConA (20 μg/ml) for 24 h. As serum-starvation control, HuH-7 and Hep G2 cells were treated with HBSS in the presence or absence of BafA1 (10 nM) for 1 h. The images were taken by an Olympus FV-1000 MPE confocal microscope. Scale bar represents 10 μm. FV10-ASW 4.0 Viewer software was used to merge green (EGFP) and red (mRFP) images to detect synaptic LC3 puncta (yellow). The blue staining indicated the nucleus. All data are presented as the means±S.D. from at least triplicate independent experiments