Fig. 1: Spinal cord injury induces ER stress and autophagy flux disruption in remote regions.

A Schematic of the protocol used in the study. Adult rats underwent spinal cord injury (SCI), or sham lesion (CTRL). At day 1, 3 and 5 SCI animals were sacrificed and the red nucleus (RN) contralateral to the lesion side was extracted and processed for biochemical analyses or analyzed on fixed-brain sections. B Box-and-whisker plots of GRP78, GADD34 and CHOP mRNA level in control animals (CTRL) and after spinal cord injury (SCI) at various time points after damage (1, 3, and 5 days), expressed as fold over CTRL (N = 5 rats per group; one-way ANOVA, p = 511.1 GRP78; p = 11.87 GADD34; p = 532.3 CHOP) ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05 vs CTRL. C Representative western blot and densitometric box-and-whisker plots from the CTRL and SCI animals at different time points after injury showing the levels (expressed as % of CTRL) of GRP78, GADD34 and CHOP normalized to GAPDH used as loading control (N = 5 rats per group; one-way ANOVA, p < 0.0001 GRP78; p < 0.0001 GADD34; p = 0.0001 CHOP) ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05 vs CTRL. D Representative western blot and densitometric box-and-whisker plots from the different groups showing the levels (expressed as % of CTRL) of LC3, p62, CTSD, LAMP1, and LAMP2 normalized to GAPDH used as loading control (N = 5 rats per group; one-way ANOVA, p < 0.0001 LC3-II; p < 0.0001 p62; p < 0.0001 CTSD; p < 0.0001 LAMP1; p < 0.01 LAMP2). ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05 vs CTRL. In all box-and-whisker plots of the present study the centre line shows the median value, edges are upper and lower quartiles, whiskers show minimum and maximum values, and each point is an individual animal. E Box-and-whisker plots of p62/SQSTM1 mRNA level in CTRL and SCI-sal as fold over CTRL (N = 4 rats per group; Unpaired t-test with Welch's correction p = 0.0125) *p < 0.05.