Fig. 8

Western blots of autophagy-related proteins in whole kidney lysates at the end-points of two in vivo experiments: Representative bands (left upper panels) and graphical representations of the densitometric quantification of autophagy-related proteins (mTOR, p-mTOR, ULK1, Atg12, p62, LC3A/B) and a housekeeping protein (β-actin) from Western blots of whole kidney lysates from groups of Non-DM, DM + NS and DM + MSC mice. Full-length blots were presented in Additional file 3: Fig. S1. a Graphs show densitometric analysis of protein levels normalized to the β-actin expression level at 10 weeks. b Graphs show densitometric analysis of protein levels normalized to the β-actin expression level at 18 weeks. c Images are representative at 10 weeks and 18 weeks. d Graphs show densitometric analysis of p-mTOR protein levels normalized to the mTOR expression level. e Graphs show densitometric analysis of LC3B protein levels normalized to the LC3A expression level. Data are means ± SEM. *p < 0.05 versus Non-DM group. ^†p < 0.05 versus DM + NS group. n = 6 biologically independent experiments