Journal
BIOMATERIALS
Volume 72, Issue -, Pages 38-48Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2015.08.044
Keywords
Autophagy; Quantum dots; Caenorhabditis elegans; Endosome; In vivo
Funding
- National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) [2013CB934400, 2012CB932400]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [61361160412, 21575096, 31271429]
- Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province of China [BK20130052, BK20130298]
- Six Talent Peaks Project of Jiangsu Province [2013-XCL-036]
- Jiangsu Provincial Innovative Research Team and Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University [IRT1075]
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Autophagy is a highly important intracellular process for the degradation of endogenous or foreign contents in the cytoplasm. Though nanomaterials-induced autophagy has been extensively studied, real-time information about the autophagic process induced by nanomaterials in live organisms remains unknown. Here by using Caenorhabditis elegans as the model organism and fluorescent semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) as a representative nanomaterial, we systematically investigated the phenomenon of QDs-induced autophagy in live organisms. Our results demonstrated that the internalized QDs trigger a complete autophagic process in C. elegans intestinal cells. Further investigations revealed that this QD-induced autophagy in C elegans is neither a response to released heavy metal ions by the QDs, nor an attempt to engulf exogenous QD materials, but a defensive strategy of the organism to clear and recycle damaged endosomes. Of particular significance, for the first time, we presented real-time tracking of autophagosomes formation in live organisms, providing detailed temporal-spatial information of this process. This study may help us better understand the relationship between nanomaterials and autophagy in vivo, and provide invaluable information for safety evaluation and bio-application of nanomaterials. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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