Autophagy plays a direct or indirect role in health and disease. A simplified definition of autophagy is that it is an exceedingly complex process which degrades modified, superfluous (surplus) or damaged cellular macromolecules and whole organelles using hydrolytic enzymes in the lysosomes. It consists of sequential steps of induction of autophagy, formation of autophagosome precursor, formati...

The lack of a rapid and quantitative autophagy assay has substantially hindered the development and implementation of autophagy-targeting therapies for a variety of human diseases. To address this critical issue, we developed a novel autophagy assay using the newly developed Cyto-ID fluorescence dye. We first verified that the Cyto-ID dye specifically labels autophagic compartments with minimal...

Autophagy plays a central role in the DNA damage response (DDR) by controlling the levels of various DNA repair and checkpoint proteins; however, how the DDR communicates with the autophagy pathway remains unknown. Using budding yeast, we demonstrate that global genotoxic damage or even a single unrepaired double-strand break (DSB) initiates a previously undescribed and selective pathway of aut...

Autophagy is a process tightly regulated by various autophagy-related proteins. It is generally classified into non-selective and selective autophagy. Whereas non-selective autophagy is triggered when the cell is under starvation, selective autophagy is involved in eliminating dysfunctional organelles, misfolded and/or ubiquitylated proteins, and intracellular pathogens. These components are re...

Autophagy is responsible for the lysosomal degradation of proteins, organelles, microorganisms and exogenous particles. Epidermis primarily consists of keratinocytes which functions as an extremely important barrier. Investigation on autophagy in keratinocytes has been continuously renewing, but is not so systematic due to the complexity of the autophagy machinery. Here we reviewed recent studi...

The growing number of biological functions affected by autophagy ascribes a special significance to identification of factors regulating it. The activator protein-1 (AP-1) transcription factors are involved in most aspects of cellular proliferation, death, or survival, yet no information regarding their involvement in autophagy is available. Here, we show that the AP-1 proteins JunB and c-Jun, ...

Objective To investigate the effects of autophagy inhibitor 3-MA and inducer RM on biosynthesis, latent replication structural proteins varicella-zoster virus (VZV) their possible mechanisms. Methods A guinea pig infected with VZV ELLEN strain was injected intravenously into pigs to establish an infection model verify whether modeling successful, 24 were randomly divided 3 groups, each group 8 ...

Autophagy protects cellular homeostasis by capturing cytosolic components and invading pathogens for lysosomal degradation. Autophagy receptors target cargo to autophagy by binding ATG8 on autophagosomal membranes. The expansion of the ATG8 family in higher eukaryotes suggests that specific interactions with autophagy receptors facilitate differential cargo handling. However, selective interact...

Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved process by which long-lived proteins and organelles are sequestered by autophagosomes and subsequently degraded by lysosomes for recycling. Autophagy is important for maintaining cardiac homeostasis and is a survival mechanism that is upregulated during stress or starvation. Accumulating evidence suggests that dysregulated or reduced autophagy is associa...

Abstract Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved degradation process that degrades damaged proteins to maintain homeostasis and protect cells against stress. In this study, we identified characterized a critical autophagy-related protein, UvAtg14, in Ustilaginoidea virens , which the ortholog of MoAtg14 rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzea . UvAtg14 co-localized with UvAtg8 (an autophagy marke...