Analyzing Autophagic Flux in Nerve Cultures

Autophagy is a key cellular mechanism involved in the degradation of long-lived proteins and organelles. We and others have previously shown that Schwann cells are able to degrade their own myelin by a form of selective autophagy, or myelinophagy. There is now increasing evidence that myelinophagy could also be aberrantly activated in other demyelinating diseases, including hereditary or inflammatory neuropathies, implicating this pathway in the pathogenesis of these disorders. In this chapter, we describe our protocol to monitor autophagy in peripheral nerves, using the autophagy flux assay. This assay can be useful to compare basal and demyelination-induced autophagy in genetic mice models, or after treatment with specific compounds.