Figure 12.

Inhibition of apoptosis by Z-VAD does not affect autophagy induction and fibrotic changes in TGFB1-treated primary proximal tubular cells. Primary cells were untreated (control) or treated with 5 ng/ml TGFB1 for 24 h in the absence or presence of 100 μM Z-VAD. After treatment the cells were collected for morphological and immunoblot analyses. (A) Representative images of phase contrast and fluorescence microscopy showing cellular and nuclear morphology of apoptosis. Scale bar: 200 µm. (B) Representative images of immunoblot analysis of LC3B, SQSTM1, FN1, and VIM. ACTB was used as a loading control. (C) Densitometric analysis of LC3B, SQSTM1, FN1, and VIM signals. After normalization with ACTB, the protein signal of control was arbitrarily set as 1, and the signals of other conditions were normalized with control to calculate fold changes. Data are expressed as mean ± SD. *, P < 0.05, significantly different from control group.