Fig. 5

Regulation of the autophagic marker microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3 (LC3) in WT and TLR4 KO mice. a LC3 immunoreactivity can be observed in the spinal dorsal horn of CCI mice. Compared with the contralateral side, no significant increase was shown in the ipsilateral side. Scale bar = 50 μm in A1, A3, A5, and A7. Scale bar = 20 μm in A2, A4, A6, and A8. b The number of LC3 IR cells showed no difference in WT and TLR4 KO mice in the superficial dorsal horn. c The protein levels of LC3-I and LC3-II were detected with immunoblotting. Levels of β-actin were used as the loading control. Western blot analysis revealed that the levels of LC3 showed no difference in CCI mice. The band densities were analyzed with ImageJ and are expressed as a percentage of the control. The bars indicate mean ± SEM. d Frozen sections (WT-CCI, POD7) were stained with LC3 and co-stained with anti-GFAP (A1–4), anti-iba-1 (B1–4), and anti-NeuN antibodies (C1–4). A4, B4 and C4 is rectangular magnification of merged A3, B3 and C3, respectively. Scale bar = 50 μm in A, B, C1–3. Scale bar = 20 μm in A, B, C4