Disruption of Neuronal Autophagy by Infected Microglia Results in Neurodegeneration
Figure 2
In vitro analysis of the impact of SIV-infected microglia supernatant on autophagy in primary neurons.
(A) Model of experimental design, as detailed in the Materials and Methods. (B) Total AV counting results show that a significant drop in the number of AV occurs in neurons exposed to SIV-infected microglia supernatant for 3 or 24 hr. Total number of AV are significantly increased after the pretreatment with rapamycin followed by SIV-infected microglia supernatant (Sup) exposure for 24 hr. *** P<0.001, * P<0.05 for n = 6 experiments. All values are mean±SEM. AV counting using 3D model reconstruction for neurons exposed to different treatments. (C) Flattened images of multi-stack confocal optical slices of neurons transfected with GFP-LC3 (green) to label AV, and DAPI (blue) to label the nucleus. The five panels display a typical sample image of a neuron under control conditions as well as 3 hr and 24 hr exposure to SIV-infected microglia supernatant or pretreated with rapamycin prior the exposure to SIV-infected microglia supernatant. The right hand panels show a snap shot of a 3D outline of the neuron with AV marked as green spheres. Scale bar, 20 µm.