Lysosomes are the major degradative compartments within cells, harbouring a wide variety of hydrolytic enzymes within their lumen. Release of lysosomal hydrolases from lysosomes into the cell cytoplasm results in cell death. Here we report that damaged lysosomes undergo autophagic turnover. Using a light-induced lysosome impairing scheme that can be controlled spatially and temporally within a cell, we show that damaged lysosomes are selectively ubiquitinated, recruit autophagic proteins and are eventually incorporated into autolysosomes for degradation. We propose that autophagic removal of lysosomes, which we term lysophagy, is a surveillance mechanism that alleviates cells from the adverse effects of lysosomal damage. We envision our method to induce lysosomal damage will enable detailed molecular studies of the lysophagy pathway in the future.

, we found that virus-specific differences in the requirement for cathepsin B are correlated with sequence polymorphisms at residues 47 in GP1 and 584 in GP2. We applied these findings to the analysis of additional ebolavirus isolates and correctly predicted that the newly identified ebolavirus species Bundibugyo, containing D47 and I584, is cathepsin B dependent and that ebolavirus Zaire-1995, the single known isolate of ebolavirus Zaire that lacks D47, is not. We also obtained evidence for virusspecific differences in the role of cathepsin L, including cooperation with cathepsin B. These studies strongly suggest that the use of endosomal cysteine proteases as host factors for entry is a general property of members of the family Filoviridae. E bdaviruses and the closely related marburgvirus comprise the family Filoviridae (6,8,9,16). Several lines of recent investigation have elucidated key steps in the pathway for ebolavirus entry into cells. Ebolavirus particles attach to cells through the binding of their glycoprotein (GP) to cell surface receptors or lectins, such as TIM-1 and DC-SIGN, expressed on the plasma membrane (1,22,27,29,37). Membrane-bound particles are taken up into cells by a macropinocytosis-like mechanism and transported to late endosomes/lysosomes (LE/LY) (20,30,31,34), which contain essential entry host factors. We previously showed that cleavage of ebolavirus Zaire-Mayinga (EBOV-May) GP by endosomal cysteine proteases is required for infection (7). More recent work has revealed a second host factor in LE/LY that is broadly required by filoviruses: Niemann-Pick C1 (NPC1) (5, 10), a multipass transmembrane protein that resides in the limiting membrane (44). According to a recently proposed model, virus GP is cleaved by endosomal cysteine proteases and binds to NPC1 (10).Several studies have examined the role of protease cleavage in more detail for EBOV-May. They show that cathepsin L functions in concert with cathepsin B to cleave the GP1 subunit of virus GP (7,35). Structural and functional studies reveal that proteases remove the heavily glycosylated carboxyl-terminal domain of GP1 to expose a more conserved domain that is closely associated with GP2 (12,19,25) and that is proposed to contain the binding site for the filovirus receptor (4,13,24,28). Further, we recently showed that cleaved, but not uncleaved, GP1 binds to purified LE/LY membranes in an NPC1-dependent manner and coimmunoprecipitates with NPC1 (10). We identified small molecules that target NPC1, inhibit infection, and block the binding of cleaved GP1 to NPC1-containing membranes (10), strongly suggesting that the conserved N-terminal domain of GP1 is a ligand for NPC1. Taken together, these previous findings suggest a model in which proteolytic cleavage of GP to remove the carboxylterminal domain of GP1 and expose its N-terminal domain may be functionally analogous to the role of CD4 binding to HIV gp120 to displace highly variable loops and create the coreceptorbinding site (18). Our recent studies show that NPC1 expression...

Eukaryotic cells maintain mitochondrial integrity through mitophagy, an autophagic process by which dysfunctional mitochondria are selectively sequestered into double-layered membrane structures, termed phagophores, and delivered to lysosomes for degradation. Here we show that small fragments of parkin-labelled mitochondria at omegasome-marked sites are engulfed by autophagic membranes one at a time. Using a light-activation scheme to impair long mitochondrial tubules, we demonstrate that sites undergoing bit-by-bit mitophagy display preferential ubiquitination, and are situated where parkin-labelled mitochondrial tubules and endoplasmic reticulum intersect. Our observations suggest contact regions between the endoplasmic reticulum and impaired mitochondria are initiation sites for local LC3 recruitment and mitochondrial remodelling that support bit-by-bit, parkin-mediated mitophagy. These results help in understanding how cells manage to fit large and morphologically heterogeneous mitochondria into micron-sized autophagic membranes during mitophagy.

Lipid droplets (LDs) are dynamic cellular organelles responsible for the storage of neutral lipids, and are associated with a multitude of metabolic syndromes. Here we report monodansylpentane (MDH) as a high contrast blue-fluorescent marker for LDs. The unique spectral properties make MDH easily combinable with other green and red fluorescent reporters for multicolor fluorescence imaging. MDH staining does not apparently affect LD trafficking, and the dye is extraordinarily photo-stable. Taken together MDH represents a reliable tool to use for the investigation of dynamic LD regulation within living cells using fluorescence microscopy.