Fig. 3

Effects of cyclooxygenase (COX) pathway inhibition on serum starvation-induced autophagy and lipid droplet (LD) degradation in zebrafish liver cells. (a–e) Cells were administered the COX inhibitor ibuprofen (10 μM) and then serum-deprived for 24 h. (f–h) Cells were pre-interfered with Si-NC or Si-PTGFS then treated with serum deprivation for 6 h. LDs were stained with BODIPY (green), nuclei were stained with DAPI (blue), and lysosomes were stained with LysoTracker (red). LD and lysosome puncta per cell as well as Mander’s overlap coefficient were measured using Image J (n = 3). Relative expression of autophagy-related genes was tested using qRT-PCR (n = 3). atg12, autophagy-related 12; ef1α, elongation factor 1α; lamp2, lysosomal-associated membrane protein 2; lc3b, microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3b; atgl adipose tissue lipase; hsl, hormone-sensitive lipase; cpt-1, carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1. Statistical significance is denoted with asterisks as follows: * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001.