Abstract
Nanoparticle-induced autophagy has been extensively studied, however, real time information about the endoplasmic reticulum involved autophagic process (ER autophagy) induced by nanomaterials remains unknown. In this work, silica nanoparticles (SNPs) were synthesized with characteristics of low toxicity, good biocompatibility and excellent water dispersibility to treat cells. Results show that either low concentration (10 μg/mL) or high concentration (200 μg/mL) of SNPs could increase the quantity of processing from microtubule-associated protein 1-light chain 3-I (LC3-I) to the other variant of LC3 (LC3-II). Interestingly, the level of autophagy induced by the SNPs is associated with the treated time but not the concentrations of SNPs. Importantly, for the first time, SNP accumulation in ER was discovered through co-localization analysis, which incurs ER autophagy. These new findings about SNPs-induced ER autophagy could open an effective way for securely designing silica-based nanoparticles and enable us to know more about ER autophagy.