Wai Haung Yu

TL;DR: These guidelines are presented for the selection and interpretation of methods for use by investigators who aim to examine macroautophagy and related processes, as well as for reviewers who need to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of papers that are focused on these processes.

TL;DR: This work unequivocally identified autophagosomes and other prelysosomal autophagic vacuoles (AVs), which were morphologically and biochemically similar to AVs highly purified from mouse liver, and provides the first evidence that macroautophagy is extensively involved in the neurodegenerative/regenerative process in AD.

TL;DR: It is shown that constitutive macroautophagy in primary cortical neurons is highly efficient, because newly formed autophagosomes are rapidly cleared by fusion with lysosomes, accounting for their scarcity in the healthy brain, and that the autophagic pathology observed in AD most likely arises from impaired clearance of AVs rather than strong autophagy induction alone.

TL;DR: Using three complementary approaches, subcellular fractionation, gamma-secretase activity assays, and immunocytochemistry, it is shown that presenilins are highly enriched in a subcompartment of the endoplasmic reticulum that is associated with mitochondria and that forms a physical bridge between the two organelles, called endoplasic Reticulum-mitochondria-associated membranes.

TL;DR: This article focuses on emerging mechanisms for promoting the clearance of neurotoxic proteins, a strategy that may curtail the onset and slow the progression of NDAs.