Figure 4. FIGURE 4: Autophagy is not required for dihydroxyacetone (DHA) induced bloodstream form cell death.

(A) DHA increases autophagosome numbers in BSF 2T1 cells. BSF 2T1 cells expressing YFP-ATG8.2 were grown with 1 mM and 6 mM DHA for 20 h. The mean number of autophagosomes per cell was determined by counting >200 cells with data displayed as a mean of three replicate experiments and error bars represent standard deviation and asterisks indicate where data differed significantly from the mean of the untreated controls **p<0.001.

(B) The IC₅₀ of DHA was determined for BSF 2T1 YFP-ATG8.2 following 48 h ATG5 RNAi induction (tet+) and un-induced control cells (tet-). Parasites were cultured with serially diluted DHA for 48 h before determining cell density. Graphs are representative of three replicate experiments.