Expanding the view of the molecular mechanisms of autophagy pathway

Abstract

Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved multistep degradation mechanism in eukaryotes, that maintains cellular homoeostasis by replenishing cells with nutrients through catabolic lysis of the cytoplasmic components. This critically coordinated pathway involves sequential processing events that begin with initiation, nucleation, and elongation of phagophores, followed by the formation of double-membrane vesicles known as autophagosomes. Finally, autophagosomes migrate towards and fuse with lysosomes in mammals and vacuoles in yeast and plants, for the eventual degradation of the intravesicular cargo. Here, we review the recent advances in our understanding of the molecular events that define the process of autophagy.

Biological insights from multi-omics analysis strategies: Complex pleotropic effects associated with autophagy

“…We focused the study on two genes, ATG7 (At5g45900) and ATG9 (AT2G31260), which are known to be components of the autophagic system of plants because they are homologs of the yeast genes involved in this process, and mutations in these two Arabidopsis genes block the process of autophagy. In yeast approximately 40 ATG genes have been characterized, and the molecular model of the process of autophagy is primarily based on the characterization of these genes and gene products ( Farre and Subramani, 2016 ; Majeed et al., 2022 ). Multi-omics studies of Arabidopsis atg mutants have been interpreted in the context of this autophagy model, and this includes for example the characterizations of atg4, atg5 , atg9, atg7 and atg18 mutants ( Masclaux-Daubresse et al., 2014 ; Avin-Wittenberg et al., 2015 ; Havé et al., 2019 ).…”

“…Genetic dissection of autophagy has identified a collection of mutants that affect this process, and these are collectively known as AuTophaGy-related ( ATG ) genes. These were initially characterized in the yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae ( Tsukada and Ohsumi, 1993 ; Farre and Subramani, 2016 ; Majeed et al., 2022 ), and homologs have also been characterized from a wide range of eukaryotes ( Yin et al., 2016 ), including plants ( Soto-Burgos et al., 2018 ). For the purpose of this study, we selected Arabidopsis mutants in two of these genes, ATG9 (AT2G31260) and ATG7 (AT5G45900), whose biochemical functions have been identified by extensive characterizations, particularly in yeast and humans.…”

c-Myc-Regulated lncRNA-IGFBP4 Suppresses Autophagy in Cervical Cancer-Originated HeLa Cells

“…Autophagy is a biological process through which cells keeps balance in the homeostasis via the lysosomal degradation during cellular development and in the stress conditions [33,34]. It is generally considered a survival mechanism through which cells remove unwanted, misfolded, or aggregated proteins; damaged organelles; and intracellular pathogens [35,36], and autophagic cell death is considered a nonapoptotic cell death [37,38]. Various factors have been identified as a regulator of autophagy including proteins and lncRNAs [33,[39][40][41], such as XIST, MALAT1, HOXA11-AS, and SNHG6, which are the well-known regulators of autophagy [42][43][44][45].…”

An Insight into the Arising Role of MicroRNAs in Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Future Diagnostic and Therapeutic Approaches

“…Autophagy constitutes a strictly orchestrated homeostatic pathway that reassures the ideal conditions for cell survival under stress, such as under conditions of inadequate nutrients and oxygen, as well as under the augmentation of non-functioning cytoplasmic organelles, which are eventually degraded [ 139 , 148 ]. There are five distinct phases on the autophagy pathway, including the (i) initiation step, (ii) the nucleation of the phagophore, (iii) the phagophore elongation step, (iv) the formation of autophagolysosome, and the (v) cargo degradation step [ 149 , 150 ].…”