VES induces an autophagic response in SGC-7901 cells.

<p>(A) Ultrastructural observations in SGC-7901 cells with transmission electron microscope. (a) Untreated SGC-7901 cells exhibited normal of cytoplasm, cell organelles, and nuclei morphologies. VES-treated SGC-7901 cells showed characteristic ultrastructural morphology of autophagy, (b to c) a significant number of autophagic vacuoles, (d) a giant autophagic vacuole filled with abundant degraded organelles, (e) autophagic vacuoles fused with multivesicular endosome. (a, c, & d, 20 000×; b, 30 000×; e, 12 000×). Typical changes were indicated by arrows. (B) Treatment of SGC-7901 cells with VES for 24 h prominently enhanced formation of autophagic vacuoles and fluorescent intensity, as determined by transfection of GFP-LC3 (C) Protein levels of LC3-I and LC3-II were measured using Western blot analysis. Data was representative of three individual experiments with similar results. (a) SGC-7901 cells were treated with 0, 5, 10, 15, and 20 μg/mL VES for 24 h. (c) SGC-7901 cells were treated with 20 μg/mL VES for 0, 6, 12, 18, and 24 h. (b) and (d) Relative densitometry of protein expression was determined by LC3-II protein densitometry with LC3-I. Actin was used as a loading control.* means <i>p</i> < 0.05 compared with control.