Protocol to study starvation-induced autophagy in developing rat neurons

Autophagy is being involved in an increasing number of cellular pathways. It now appears that autophagy stimulation and inhibition have complex effects in neurons. Here, we present a simple yet powerful protocol to induce autophagy in primary neurons in culture by partial nutrient deprivation, in neurons with or without transfection of plasmids encoding the Longin domain of VAMP7 or a nanobody directed against VAMP7. Although limited to cells in culture, this protocol can facilitate the study of autophagy in neurons. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Wojnacki et al. (2020).