scispace - formally typeset
Open AccessJournal ArticleDOI

The machinery of macroautophagy

Yuchen Feng, +3 more
- 01 Jan 2014 - 
- Vol. 24, Iss: 1, pp 24-41
TLDR
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.

read more

Content maybe subject to copyright    Report

Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI

Autophagy in Zika Virus Infection: A Possible Therapeutic Target to Counteract Viral Replication

TL;DR: It is appealing to study the role of autophagic molecular effectors during viral infection to identify potential targets for anti-ZIKV therapeutic intervention.
Journal ArticleDOI

Apoptosis or autophagy, that is the question: Two ways for muscle sacrifice towards meat

TL;DR: This review focuses on the switch from the normal, aerobic metabolism to the post-slaughter, anaerobic one, underlining all the consequences in terms of muscle reactions driving and influencing the transformation.
Journal ArticleDOI

Interleukin-6 downregulated vascular smooth muscle cell contractile proteins via ATG4B-mediated autophagy in thoracic aortic dissection.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that IL-6 downregulated expression of VSMCs contractile proteins α-SMA and SM22α via enhancing ATG4B-mediated autophagy in TAD via enhancing AtG4 B-mediatedAutophagy up-regulation.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Role of Autophagy in Liver Cancer: Crosstalk in Signaling Pathways and Potential Therapeutic Targets.

TL;DR: The signaling pathways involved in the cross-talk between autophagy and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are reviewed and the status of the development of novel HCC therapy by targeting the core molecular machinery of autophagic as well as the key signaling pathways is analyzed.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI

AMPK and mTOR regulate autophagy through direct phosphorylation of Ulk1

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.
Journal ArticleDOI

Mutations in the parkin gene cause autosomal recessive juvenile parkinsonism

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’.
Journal ArticleDOI

Tissue fractionation studies. 6. Intracellular distribution patterns of enzymes in rat-liver tissue

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.
Journal ArticleDOI

Autophagy: process and function

TL;DR: In this review, the process of autophagy is summarized, and the role of autophileagy is discussed in a process-based manner.
Related Papers (5)

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition)

Daniel J. Klionsky, +2522 more
- 21 Jan 2016 -