Fig. 3

Effect of aging and hypoxia on the autophagy of BM-MSCs. a Representative electron micrographs show the autophagic vacuole formation in MSCs. b Cytoplasm quantification of the average number of the autophagic structures. c Representative immunofluorescence images of green fluorescent protein (GFP)-LC3 (green fluorescence) and 4,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) (blue fluorescence) in BM-MSCs under normal conditions and H/SD. d Quantification of autophagy was presented as the percentage of BM-MSCs with LC3 (n = 5, p < 0.05). e Representative western blots of LC3-I/LC3-II, ATG12–5, P62, and Beclin-1 in young and aged BM-MSCs subjected to normal and hypoxic conditions. Semiquantification of the protein expression levels of LC3-II/ LC3-I (f), ATG12-5 (g), p62 (h), and Beclin-1 (i) at the indicated time points. Data are expressed as the means ± SEM; n = 5; *p < 0.05