Fig. 3

Crush-induced activation of autophagy in the rat optic nerve. A Representative double immunofluorescence staining of p-ATG16L1 (green), SMI-32 (red) and DAPI (blue) in the contralateral unlesioned control and different parts of the optic nerve 6 h after crush injury. Asterisks indicate the site of the optic nerve lesion under a 40 × objective. B Enlarged views on the two stumps corresponding to the upper panel. Arrows indicate particles of p-ATG16L1 on the SMI-32-labeled axons. C Overview image of an optic nerve after crush lesion (labeled with DAPI). D Quantitative analysis of the number of axonal p-ATG16L1 puncta in different regions (proximal and distal to the crush site, as well as 500 μm and 1000 μm away from the crush site, as shown in C) compared to contralateral uninjured control. The analysis included data from three animals, with four views examined at each region. Data are presented as Mean ± SEM. **P < 0.01, according to Kruskal–Wallis test and Dunn’s multiple comparisons test