Published by Bindi M. Doshi, PhD on
What does Autophagy Flux even mean? It’s not in the Urban dictionary. Dear reader, you have come to the right place to learn a little more about autophagy flux and how our Autophagy Watch kit can help you.
Autophagy allows for cell survival during subprime conditions, such as nutrient starvation, etc. It doesn’t make sense for a cell to keep non-essential proteins, so autophagy kicks in and degrades these non-essential members of the cell. The term autophagy “flux” simply refers to the autophagy cycle. Much of this process was discussed in this earlier blog.
Tracking the steps of autophagy can be a pretty neat thing. But how can you do this? With our Autophagy Watch kit, you pretty much only need your cells (and a few other reagents sitting around your lab), a little time and you have your answers in a very easy to use manner! With Autophagy Watch, you can use Western blot or Immunocytochemistry to see if you’ve induced autophagy in your cell type. Two inhibitors are provided- Chloroquine and Bafilomycin A1. Chloroquine will inhibit fusion between lysosome and autophagosome. Bafilomycin A1 will inhibit fusion with lysosome. In this manner, late stage steps of autophagy are inhibited.
Western blots are made much easier since we’ve included LC3 antibodies that are HRP-conjugated AND a nifty LC3 positive control!
And if you want images, beautiful images, to present in your presentation or on your poster, Autophagy Watch can help create some beauties!
So regardless of your final results, western blot or fluorescent image, or both- with this kit, you will know what the flux is going on in your cells as they undergo autophagy.
