Autophagy deficient keratinocytes under paraquat stress

Autophagy is a mechanism that regulates cellular metabolism and clearance of damaged macromolecules and organelles. Impaired degradation of modified macromolecules contributes to cellular dysfunction and is observed in aged tissue and senescent cells. We have inactivated Atg7, an essential autophagy gene, in murine keratinocytes and have found in an earlier study that this resulted in increased baseline oxidative stress and reduced capacity to degrade crosslinked proteins after oxidative ultraviolet stress. To investigate whether autophagy deficiency would promote cellular aging, we studied, how Atg7 deficient (KO) and Atg7 bearing cells (WT) would respond to stress induced by Paraquat (PQ), an oxidant drug commonly used to induce cellular senescence. This study was performed in biological triplicates for autophagy competent and deficient mouse Keratinocytes treated with 20µM Paraquat for 48h or sham treated