Fig. 1

Autophagic activation promotes the antibacterial activity of EGCs against ETECK88 infection. A–C qRT‒PCR analysis of IL-1β, IL-6, and TGF-β mRNA expression. D, E Representative images showing the interaction between ETECK88-mCherry and autophagosomes. EGCs were transfected with the pEGFP-LC3B plasmid, and cells were pretreated with or without RAPA or RAPA plus 3-MA or CQ and then infected with or without ETECK88-mCherry for 3/6 h. The binding regions of bacteria and autophagosomes are denoted by white arrows. Scale bar, 20 μm. F, G Intracellular survival of ETECK88-treated EGCs pretreated with or without RAPA or RAPA plus 3-MA or CQ. For qRT‒PCR, GAPDH was used for normalization, and the mean fold changes compared to those in the CON group were calculated according to the 2^−ΔΔCT method. The data are shown as the mean ± SEM. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001