There is increasing interest in the role of autophagic flux in maintaining normal vessel wall biology and a growing suspicion that autophagic dysregulation may be a common pathway through which vascular aging and associated pathologies develop. Within endothelial and smooth muscle cells, diverse but important triggers that range from oxidized lipids to β-amyloid seem to stimulate autophagosome ...

Autophagy regulation is important for tumor cell survival. Activation and inhibition of autophagy can sensitize tumor cells to anticancer drugs. However, few autophagy-regulating small molecules are available to increase the efficacy of anticancer drugs. Here, we report that 2,2'-methylenebis (6-tert-butyl 4-methylphenol), hereafter referred to as methylenebis, is a novel autophagy-regulating s...

Autophagy delivers cytoplasmic constituents to autophagosomes and is involved in innate and adaptive immunity. Cytosolic phospholipase (cPLA(2))-initiated proinflammatory lipid mediator pathways play a critical role in host defense and inflammation. The crosstalk between the two pathways remains unclear. In this study, we report that cPLA(2) and its metabolite lipid mediators induced autophagy ...

Autophagy is a process by which misfolded and damaged proteins are sequestered into autophagosomes, before degradation in and recycling from lysosomes. We have extensively studied the role of autophagy in varicella-zoster virus (VZV) infection, and have observed that vesicular cells are filled with >100 autophagosomes that are easily detectable after immunolabeling for the LC3 protein. To confi...

Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved and intricately regulated cellular process in which damaged or aggregated proteins, organelles, and pathogen-derived components are engulfed by double-membrane structures, termed autophagosomes, and targeted for lysosomal degradation [1]. The autophagic process consists of distinct phases that include nucleation, autophagosome formation, selection of car...

Magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (NPs) are emerging as novel materials with great potentials for various biomedical applications, but their biological activities are largely unknown. In the present study, we found that ferroferric oxide nanoparticles (Fe3O4 NPs) induced autophagy in blood cells. Both naked and modified Fe3O4 NPs induced LC3 lipidation and degraded p62, a monitor of autophagy f...

Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved process that enables catabolic and degradative pathways. These pathways commonly depend on vesicular transport controlled by Rabs, small GTPases inactivated by TBC/RabGAPs. The Rac1 effector TBC/RabGAP Armus (TBC1D2A) is known to inhibit Rab7, a key regulator of lysosomal function. However, the precise coordination of signaling and intracellular traffick...

Autophagy is an essential component of host immunity and used by viruses for survival. However, the autophagy signaling pathways involved in virus replication are poorly documented. Here, we observed that rabies virus (RABV) infection triggered intracellular autophagosome accumulation and results in incomplete autophagy by inhibiting autophagy flux. Subsequently, we found that RABV infection in...

Dictyostelium discoideum is a good model of autophagy. However, the lack of autophagic flux techniques hinders the assessment of new mutants or drugs. One of these techniques, which has been used successfully in yeast and mammalian cells, but has not yet been described in Dictyostelium, is based on the presence of proteolytic fragments derived from autophagic degradation of expressed fusion pro...

Macroautophagy (autophagy) is a critical cellular stress response; however, the signal transduction pathways controlling autophagy induction in response to stress are poorly understood. Here we reveal a new mechanism of autophagy control whose deregulation disrupts mitochondrial integrity and energy homeostasis in vivo. Stress conditions including hypoxia and exercise induce reactive oxygen spe...