Figure 4.

Chronic disturbance of ER calcium homeostasis diminishes “core” Atg proteins required for autophagosome formation. Liraglutide rescues autophagy impairments in the neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cell line upon persistent ER stress. Twenty-four hours post seeding, SH-SY5Y cells were serum starved for 8 h and treated with 0 or 100 nM of thapsigargin for 16 h, in the presence or absence of 100 nM Liraglutide. Cells were harvested, and the expression of beclin [(a)], ATG3 [(b)], ATG7 [(c)] and of LC3 [(d)] were determined by western blotting. β-Actin was used as the loading control to all western blot analyses. Each bar represents mean ± SEM from four independent experiments. Data is expressed as fold change to the control (CNTRL; unstressed/untreated conditions). Data was analysed by one- and two-way ANOVA, followed by post hoc Bonferroni’s multiple comparison t-test (^** p ≤ 0.01 & ^*** p ≤ 0.001 compared to CNTRL; ^# p ≤ 0.05, ^## p ≤ 0.01 & ^### p ≤ 0.001 compared to the corresponding thapsigargin-treated cells).