[Abstract unavailable

No abstract

Autophagy is a major degradation pathway that engulfs, removes and recycles unwanted cytoplasmic material including damaged organelles and toxic protein aggregates. One type of autophagy, macroautophagy, is a tightly regulated process facilitated by autophagy-related (Atg) proteins that must communicate effectively and act in concert to enable the de novo formation of the phagophore, its maturation into an autophagosome and its subsequent targeting and fusion with the lysosome or the vacuole. Autophagy plays a significant role in physiology and its deregulation has been linked to several diseases, which include certain cancers, cardiomyopathies, and neurodegenerative diseases. Here, we summarize the key processes and the proteins that make up the macroautophagy machinery. We also briefly highlight recently uncovered molecular mechanisms specific to neurons allowing them to uniquely regulate this catabolic process to accommodate their complicated architecture and non-dividing state. Overall, these distinct mechanisms establish a conceptual framework addressing how macroautophagic dysfunction could result in maladies of the nervous system, providing possible therapeutic avenues to explore with a goal of preventing or curing such diseases.

No abstract

Serine carboxypeptidases Prc1 and newly characterized Atg42/Ybr139w are vacuolar proteases required for recycling of amino acids, zymogen activation, and the terminal steps of autophagy in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.