Figure 6
From: Disruption of retinal pigment epithelial cell properties under the exposure of cotinine
The effect of nicotine and cotinine on ER stress and autophagy pathway marker expression. (A) The expression of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response protein (GRP78, ATF6 and PERK) in ARPE-19 cell after different nicotine and/or cotinine treatments was evaluated by immunoblotting. Neither nicotine nor cotinine caused any significant differential expression in these ER stress markers. β-actin was used as housekeeping protein for normalization. (B) The expression of autophagy pathway gene (ATG5, BECN1 and MAP1LC3B) in ARPE-19 cells after different nicotine and/or cotinine treatments was analyzed by semi-quantitative PCR. 1 μM and 2 μM cotinine treatment groups significantly increased the expression of the 3 autophagy pathway genes, whereas 2 μM nicotine-cotinine treatment group only increased the expression of ATG5 and BECN1 genes. Housekeeping gene (GAPDH) was used for normalization. The relative expression levels were compared to that of the vehicle control group. ‘*’p < 0.05; ‘**’p < 0.01; ‘***’p < 0.001.
