Fig. 1.

Interaction between autophagy and apoptosis induced by general anesthetics with various degrees of concentrations and durations. (a) Physiological autophagy plays a protective role for cell survival by inhibiting apoptosis induction after adequate general anesthetics (GAs) at a low concentration and short exposure. However, excessive GAs at a persistent and high concentration result in type I cell death by apoptosis and inhibit protective autophagy activity via cleavage of ATG protein required for autophagy (b), and over-activated autophagy that cause type II autophagic cell death and aggravation of apoptosis (c).