Fig. 8. Enhancement of autophagy ameliorated TEC injury under CaOx stimulation.

a Flow cytometry was performed on TEC treated with the autophagy agonist rapamycin or the autophagy antagonist 3-MA. Both apoptosis and necrosis of TEC were significantly decreased when autophagy was induced but were increased when autophagy was inhibited. b TEC apoptosis was examined by the TUNEL assay. Induction of autophagy with rapamycin reduced apoptosis, and inhibition of autophagy increased apoptosis. Scale bar: 150 μm. c Autophagy- and apoptosis-associated proteins were detected by western blot. In the rapamycin-treated group, the cleaved caspase-3 and Bax levels were reduced, and the anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 was upregulated. Beclin-1, Atg5 and Atg7 expression levels were upregulated by rapamycin treatment and downregulated by 3-MA. Data are shown as the means ± S.D.; n = 3 per group