Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Induction of cyto-protective autophagy by paramontroseite VO 2 nanocrystals

Wei Zhou, Yanyan Miao, Yunjiao Zhang, Liang Liu, Jun Lin, James Y Yang, Yi Xie and Longping Wen



A variety of inorganic nanomaterials have been shown to induce autophagy, a cellular degradation process critical for the maintenance of cellular homeostasis. The overwhelming majority of autophagic responses elicited by nanomaterials were detrimental to cell fate and contributed to increased cell death. A widely held view is that the inorganic nanoparticles, when encapsulated and trapped by autophagosomes, may compromise the normal autophagic process due to the inability of the cells to degrade these materials and thus they manifest a detrimental effect on the well-being of a cell. Here we show that, contrary to this notion, nano-sized paramontroseite VO 2 nanocrystals (P–VO 2 ) induced cyto-protective, rather than death-promoting, autophagy in cultured HeLa cells. P–VO 2 also caused up-regulation of heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), a cellular protein with a demonstrated role in protecting cells against death under stress situations. The autophagy inhibitor ...



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