scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Journal ArticleDOI

The machinery of macroautophagy

01 Jan 2014-Cell Research (Nature Publishing Group)-Vol. 24, Iss: 1, pp 24-41
TL;DR: This review focuses on macroautophagy, briefly describing the discovery of this process in mammalian cells, discussing the current views concerning the donor membrane that forms the phagophore, and characterizing the autophagy machinery including the available structural information.
Abstract: Autophagy is a primarily degradative pathway that takes place in all eukaryotic cells. It is used for recycling cytoplasm to generate macromolecular building blocks and energy under stress conditions, to remove superfluous and damaged organelles to adapt to changing nutrient conditions and to maintain cellular homeostasis. In addition, autophagy plays a critical role in cytoprotection by preventing the accumulation of toxic proteins and through its action in various aspects of immunity including the elimination of invasive microbes and its participation in antigen presentation. The most prevalent form of autophagy is macroautophagy, and during this process, the cell forms a double-membrane sequestering compartment termed the phagophore, which matures into an autophagosome. Following delivery to the vacuole or lysosome, the cargo is degraded and the resulting macromolecules are released back into the cytosol for reuse. The past two decades have resulted in a tremendous increase with regard to the molecular studies of autophagy being carried out in yeast and other eukaryotes. Part of the surge in interest in this topic is due to the connection of autophagy with a wide range of human pathophysiologies including cancer, myopathies, diabetes and neurodegenerative disease. However, there are still many aspects of autophagy that remain unclear, including the process of phagophore formation, the regulatory mechanisms that control its induction and the function of most of the autophagy-related proteins. In this review, we focus on macroautophagy, briefly describing the discovery of this process in mammalian cells, discussing the current views concerning the donor membrane that forms the phagophore, and characterizing the autophagy machinery including the available structural information.

Content maybe subject to copyright    Report

Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A way forward is suggested for the effective targeting of autophagy by understanding the context-dependent roles of autophile and by capitalizing on modern approaches to clinical trial design.
Abstract: Autophagy is a mechanism by which cellular material is delivered to lysosomes for degradation, leading to the basal turnover of cell components and providing energy and macromolecular precursors. Autophagy has opposing, context-dependent roles in cancer, and interventions to both stimulate and inhibit autophagy have been proposed as cancer therapies. This has led to the therapeutic targeting of autophagy in cancer to be sometimes viewed as controversial. In this Review, we suggest a way forwards for the effective targeting of autophagy by understanding the context-dependent roles of autophagy and by capitalizing on modern approaches to clinical trial design.

1,606 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Different types of selective autophagy are discussed, emphasizing the role of ligand receptors and scaffold proteins in providing cargo specificity, and unanswered questions in the field are highlighted.
Abstract: Macroautophagy, initially described as a non-selective nutrient recycling process, is essential for the removal of multiple cellular components. In the past three decades, selective autophagy has been characterized as a highly regulated and specific degradation pathway for removal of unwanted cytosolic components and damaged and/or superfluous organelles. Here, we discuss different types of selective autophagy, emphasizing the role of ligand receptors and scaffold proteins in providing cargo specificity, and highlight unanswered questions in the field.

713 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
15 Aug 2018-Cancer
TL;DR: Fundamental advances in the biology of autophagy are presented, approaches to targeting Autophagy, the preclinical rationale and clinical experience with hydroxychloroquine in cancer clinical trials, the potential role ofAutophagy in tumor immunity, and recent developments in next‐generation autophagic inhibitors that have clinical potential are presented.
Abstract: Autophagy is a conserved, self-degradation system that is critical for maintaining cellular homeostasis during stress conditions. Dysregulated autophagy has implications in health and disease. Specifically, in cancer, autophagy plays a dichotomous role by inhibiting tumor initiation but supporting tumor progression. Early results from clinical trials that repurposed hydroxychloroquine for cancer have suggested that autophagy inhibition may be a promising approach for advanced cancers. In this review of the literature, the authors present fundamental advances in the biology of autophagy, approaches to targeting autophagy, the preclinical rationale and clinical experience with hydroxychloroquine in cancer clinical trials, the potential role of autophagy in tumor immunity, and recent developments in next-generation autophagy inhibitors that have clinical potential. Autophagy is a promising target for drug development in cancer. Cancer 2018. © 2018 American Cancer Society.

644 citations


Cites background from "The machinery of macroautophagy"

  • ...Conversely, the study of how selective autophagy targets specific organelles or proteins has engendered terms such as mitophagy, pexophagy, and xenophagy.(10) Recently, autophagy has been identified as a target for therapeutic intervention in several diseases, including cancer....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The diverse metabolic fuel sources that can be produced by autophagy provide tumors with metabolic plasticity and can allow them to thrive in what can be an austere microenvironment, and understanding how autophile can fuel cellular metabolism will enable more effective combinatorial therapeutic strategies.

565 citations


Cites background from "The machinery of macroautophagy"

  • ...Indeed, this has been the subject of multiple excellent reviews (Feng et al., 2014; Klionsky and Codogno, 2013; Ktistakis and Tooze, 2016)....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Understanding these processes could shed light on pathologies associated with hypoxia, including cardiovascular diseases and cancer, and disease mechanisms, such as inflammation and wound repair.
Abstract: Molecular oxygen (O2) sustains intracellular bioenergetics and is consumed by numerous biochemical reactions, making it essential for most species on Earth. Accordingly, decreased oxygen concentration (hypoxia) is a major stressor that generally subverts life of aerobic species and is a prominent feature of pathological states encountered in bacterial infection, inflammation, wounds, cardiovascular defects and cancer. Therefore, key adaptive mechanisms to cope with hypoxia have evolved in mammals. Systemically, these adaptations include increased ventilation, cardiac output, blood vessel growth and circulating red blood cell numbers. On a cellular level, ATP-consuming reactions are suppressed, and metabolism is altered until oxygen homeostasis is restored. A critical question is how mammalian cells sense oxygen levels to coordinate diverse biological outputs during hypoxia. The best-studied mechanism of response to hypoxia involves hypoxia inducible factors (HIFs), which are stabilized by low oxygen availability and control the expression of a multitude of genes, including those involved in cell survival, angiogenesis, glycolysis and invasion/metastasis. Importantly, changes in oxygen can also be sensed via other stress pathways as well as changes in metabolite levels and the generation of reactive oxygen species by mitochondria. Collectively, this leads to cellular adaptations of protein synthesis, energy metabolism, mitochondrial respiration, lipid and carbon metabolism as well as nutrient acquisition. These mechanisms are integral inputs into fine-tuning the responses to hypoxic stress.

471 citations

References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A molecular mechanism for regulation of the mammalian autophagy-initiating kinase Ulk1, a homologue of yeast ATG1, is demonstrated and a signalling mechanism for UlK1 regulation and autophagic induction in response to nutrient signalling is revealed.
Abstract: Autophagy is a process by which components of the cell are degraded to maintain essential activity and viability in response to nutrient limitation. Extensive genetic studies have shown that the yeast ATG1 kinase has an essential role in autophagy induction. Furthermore, autophagy is promoted by AMP activated protein kinase (AMPK), which is a key energy sensor and regulates cellular metabolism to maintain energy homeostasis. Conversely, autophagy is inhibited by the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), a central cell-growth regulator that integrates growth factor and nutrient signals. Here we demonstrate a molecular mechanism for regulation of the mammalian autophagy-initiating kinase Ulk1, a homologue of yeast ATG1. Under glucose starvation, AMPK promotes autophagy by directly activating Ulk1 through phosphorylation of Ser 317 and Ser 777. Under nutrient sufficiency, high mTOR activity prevents Ulk1 activation by phosphorylating Ulk1 Ser 757 and disrupting the interaction between Ulk1 and AMPK. This coordinated phosphorylation is important for Ulk1 in autophagy induction. Our study has revealed a signalling mechanism for Ulk1 regulation and autophagy induction in response to nutrient signalling.

5,314 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
09 Apr 1998-Nature
TL;DR: Mutations in the newly identified gene appear to be responsible for the pathogenesis of Autosomal recessive juvenile parkinsonism, and the protein product is named ‘Parkin’.
Abstract: Parkinson's disease is a common neurodegenerative disease with complex clinical features1. Autosomal recessive juvenile parkinsonism (AR-JP)2,3 maps to the long arm of chromosome 6 (6q25.2-q27) and is linked strongly to the markers D6S305 and D6S253 (ref. 4); the former is deleted in one Japanese AR-JP patient5. By positional cloning within this microdeletion, we have now isolated a complementary DNA clone of 2,960 base pairs with a 1,395-base-pair open reading frame, encoding a protein of 465 amino acids with moderate similarity to ubiquitin at the amino terminus and a RING-finger motif at the carboxy terminus. The gene spans more than 500 kilobases and has 12 exons, five of which (exons 3–7) are deleted in the patient. Four other AR-JP patients from three unrelated families have a deletion affecting exon 4 alone. A 4.5-kilobase transcript that is expressed in many human tissues but is abundant in the brain, including the substantia nigra, is shorter in brain tissue from one of the groups of exon-4-deleted patients. Mutations in the newly identified gene appear to be responsible for the pathogenesis of AR-JP, and we have therefore named the protein product ‘Parkin’.

4,922 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The results are shown to favour the ferryl ion structure, or an isomer of this structure, for the higher oxidation state, and theHigher oxidation state may provisionally be named ferrylmyoglobin.
Abstract: more acidic solutions, with pH < 7 0, a few seconds elapsed before equilibrium was attained. Taking into account the ionization of the haem-linked group on MetMb and the higher oxidation state, the variation of Kb,. with pH is shown to confirm the conclusion that 2 moles ofH+ are liberated/mole of acidic MetMb. Using 6-1 for the pK of the group in MetMb as established in other studies, the results give apK of75 for the group in the higher oxidation state at 200 and I= 0 04. 3. The variation of KRb, with temperature gives AHO = 10-0 ± 2*0 kcal./g.mol.: if the ionization of the haem-linked group is allowed for, the value 9*0 ± 1.0 kcal./g.mol. is obtained. 4. The dependence of Kob. on ionic strength is in accord with a change in charge from + 1 on MetMb to zero on the higher oxidation state. 5. The results are shown to favour the ferryl ion structure, or an isomer of this structure, for the higher oxidation state. The isomeric structures would, in general, require the presence of another ionizing group in myoglobin, but no evidence for such an ionization could be found. With other direct evidence favouring the ferryl ion structure this is to be preferred, and the higher oxidation state may provisionally be named ferrylmyoglobin.

3,654 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this review, the process of autophagy is summarized, and the role of autophileagy is discussed in a process-based manner.
Abstract: Autophagy is an intracellular degradation system that delivers cytoplasmic constituents to the lysosome. Despite its simplicity, recent progress has demonstrated that autophagy plays a wide variety of physiological and pathophysiological roles, which are sometimes complex. Autophagy consists of several sequential steps--sequestration, transport to lysosomes, degradation, and utilization of degradation products--and each step may exert different function. In this review, the process of autophagy is summarized, and the role of autophagy is discussed in a process-based manner.

3,527 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
21 May 2004-Science
TL;DR: The identification of two homozygous mutations affecting the PINK1 kinase domain in three consanguineous PARK6 families provide a direct molecular link between mitochondria and the pathogenesis of PD.
Abstract: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra We previously mapped a locus for a rare familial form of PD to chromosome 1p36 (PARK6) Here we show that mutations in PINK1 (PTEN-induced kinase 1) are associated with PARK6 We have identified two homozygous mutations affecting the PINK1 kinase domain in three consanguineous PARK6 families: a truncating nonsense mutation and a missense mutation at a highly conserved amino acid Cell culture studies suggest that PINK1 is mitochondrially located and may exert a protective effect on the cell that is abrogated by the mutations, resulting in increased susceptibility to cellular stress These data provide a direct molecular link between mitochondria and the pathogenesis of PD

3,224 citations