Autophagosomes initiate distally and mature during transport toward the cell soma in primary neurons

DRG neurons isolated from transgenic mice expressing the autophagosome marker GFP-LC3 (shown in the top panel) were transfected with RFP-Ub (shown in the bottom panel). The axon was analyzed by time-lapse confocal microscopy using a confocal spinning disk microscope (Perkin Elmer UltraVIEW Vox Spinning Disk Confocal with a Nikon Ti Microscope). Frames were taken once every 2 seconds for 5 minutes. The retrograde direction is toward the right.