Figure 1: Autophagy is inhibited in the presence of Hh agonists.

(a,b) HeLa cells were treated with 10 μg ml⁻¹ N-Shh peptide for 24 h. (a) Endogenous LC3 was detected by immunoblot in total cell lysates, quantified by densitometric analysis and normalized to actin. Relative levels were expressed in percentage with control cells set to 100 and shown in graph. (b) mRNA was obtained and levels of Ptch1 or Gli1 and actin mRNA were amplified by standard PCR and visualized in agarose gels. Graph shows mRNA levels quantified by densitometric analysis and normalized to actin. (c) 8xGli-luciferase construct was transfected in HeLa cells for 24 h, followed by treatment with 10 μM purmorphamine, or DMSO as a control, for another 24 h. Graph represents the mean value of the firefly luciferase activity relative to Renilla transfection control. (d) Endogenous LC3-II was detected in cell lysates from cells treated with 10 μM purmorphamine for 24 h, either in the absence or presence of trehalose (100 mM). Where indicated, bafA1 (400 nM) was added for the last 4 h. Quantification by densitometric analysis relative to actin is shown in the graph. (e) Cells were treated with 10 μM purmorphamine for 24 h under starvation conditions, either in the presence of bafA1 or DMSO as a control, and LC3-II and actin levels were detected. (f) HA-HttQ74 construct was transfected into HeLa cells followed by treatment with 10 μM purmorphamine for 24 h. The percentage of transfected cells with aggregates detected by HA immunofluorescence is shown in the graph. P-values were calculated by odds ratio. (g) U20S cells stably expressing HaloTag-p62 were labelled with HaloTag ligand for 15 min and washed out followed by treatment with purmorphamine. After 48 h, cells were lysed, run on a SDS–polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and fluorescent HaloTag was visualized using a Typhoon 8600 variable mode imager. Fluorescence was normalized to total protein levels, detected on the same gels by Kryton Fluorescence protein stain. A representative gel and its quantitated normalized levels are shown. In all panels, graphs show mean values and error bars represent s.d. from a triplicate experiment representative of at least three independent experiments. Statistical analyses were performed by two-tail Student’s t-test unless indicated: ***P<0.001; **P<0.01; *P<0.05. SDS–PAGE, SDS–polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis.