INTRODUCTION Autophagy is an adaptive response to extracellular and intracellular stress by which cytoplasmic components and organelles, including damaged mitochondria, are degraded to promote cell survival and restore cell homeostasis. Certain genes involved in autophagy confer susceptibility to Crohn's disease. Reactive oxygen species and pro-inflammatory cytokines such as tumor necrosis fact...

BACKGROUND To survive starvation and other forms of stress, eukaryotic cells undergo a lysosomal process of cytoplasmic degradation known as autophagy. Autophagy has been implicated in a number of cellular and developmental processes, including cell-growth control and programmed cell death. However, direct evidence of a causal role for autophagy in these processes is lacking, resulting in part ...

Radiation-induced autophagy mediates susceptibility to radiation [1]. However, autophagy is a multifaceted process. Herein, 2 aspects of autophagy, induction of autophagy or changes in autophagic flux, in radiation sensitivity were investigated. Relying on a systems-based approach and adding to a large, data dense morphome database [2, 3], we mined for complex cellular information on autophagy ...

Evidence is accumulating that autophagy occurs in advanced atherosclerotic plaques. Although there is an almost relentless discovery of molecules that are involved in autophagy, studies of selective autophagy induction or inhibition using knockout mice are just now beginning to reveal its biological significance. Most likely, autophagy safeguards plaque cells against cellular distress, in parti...

Autophagy is a homoeostatic process by which cytoplasmic material is targeted for degradation by the cell. Viruses have learned to manipulate the autophagic pathway to ensure their own replication and survival. Although much progress has been achieved in dissecting the interplay between viruses and cellular autophagic machinery, it is not well understood how the cellular autophagic pathway is u...

Many neurodegenerative diseases exhibit protein accumulation and increased oxidative stress. Therapeutic strategies include clearing aggregate-prone proteins by enhancing autophagy or decreasing oxidative stress with antioxidants. Many autophagy-inducing stimuli increase reactive oxygen species (ROS), raising concerns that the benefits of autophagy up-regulation may be counterbalanced by ROS to...

How autophagy, an evolutionarily conserved intracellular catabolic system for bulk degradation, selectively degrades protein aggregates is poorly understood. Here, we show that several maternally derived germ P granule components are selectively eliminated by autophagy in somatic cells during C. elegans embryogenesis. The activity of sepa-1 is required for the degradation of these P granule com...

Autophagy, a cellular process of "self-eating" by which intracellular components are degraded within the lysosome, is an evolutionarily conserved response to various stresses. Autophagy is associated with numerous patho-physiological conditions, and dysregulation of autophagy contributes to the pathogenesis of a variety of human diseases including cancer. Depending on context, activation of aut...

Autophagy, an intracellular degradation and energy recycling mechanism, is emerging as an important regulator of immune responses. However, the role of autophagy in regulating neutrophil functions is not known. We investigated neutrophil biology using myeloid-specific autophagy-deficient mice and found that autophagy deficiency reduced neutrophil degranulation in vitro and in vivo. Mice with au...

BACKGROUND Xingnaojing (XNJ), a well known prescription in traditional Chinese medicine, has been used for treatment of stroke in China. However, the effects and mechanisms of XNJ on autophagy are not clear. Here, we used the cell models of autophagy induced by serum-free condition and ischemia stroke in rats to further investigate whether the p53-DRAM pathway is involved in the effects of XNJ ...