There are many autophagy inhibitor, just like 3-Methyladenine,Wortmannin which work from different angles. However, the autophagy inhibitors often play a number of effects except the inhibiting effect of autophagy.
For example, I want to work out the radiation effect by autophagy, 3-MA will be used to inhibit autophagy, and then, we will treat the cancer cell by X-ray, the control group cell will be treated by X-ray only. Next,we will test the survival rate of cell by, such as MTT, since 3-MA itself has inhibitory effect, so, how to confirm that the different survival rate of cell is caused by X-ray?
Thank you!
I think it will depend on which step you want to follow. The advantage is that you can properly target a signaling pathway (eg mTor) or distinct steps of the autophagic process . However, if you are only interested in inhibiting the process and evaluate the effect after X-ray irradiation, then wortmannin and 3-MA would probably be the ones to go since most studies work with these inhibitors and you could possibly extrapolate your findings and compare with the ones available in the literature.
I agree with Vitor, and I recomend 3MA or wortmannin if you are working with isolated cells. After finding an effect of autophagy in your system, you can test reducing the expression of some essential ATG proteins. Also read Autophagy guidelines (Klionsky et al). Good luck !
- Badges
- Science topic