Figure 1.

PepO triggers macrophage autophagy. (a) PepO induced the elevation of autophagy marker ULK and beclin 1 and the turnover of LC3 I to LC3 II after 6 h of PepO treatment (10 μg/mL). (b) WT macrophage was differently treated and the LC3 was monitored by immunofluorescent microscopy. Recombinant PepO protein (10 μg/mL) induced obviously LC3 puncta aggregation comparing to PBS treated macrophage. (c) WT D39 infected macrophage showed significantly higher amounts of LC3 puncta than D39ΔpepO infected macrophage after 6 h of infection (MOI = 100). (d) and (e) The cells with numerous LC3 puncta of differently treated macrophage were counted (n = 100) in three independent experiments. Images were representative of three independent experiments. (d) and (e) were the statistical analyzation of (b) and (c), respectively. Data were shown as mean + SEM (n = 3) and are representative of three independent experiments. **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. Student’s t-test was employed for statistical analysis.