Medicine and Physiology: Autophagy
Daniel J. Klionsky, University of Michigan
Noboru Mizushima, University of Tokyo
Yoshinori Ohsumi, Tokyo Institute of Technology The process of autophagy – during which cells consume seemingly obsolete bits of cellular machinery – had been known since the 1950s, but when Ohsumi, Mizushima, and Klionsky started to examine the process in the late 1980s, they found that autophagy played a critical role in cell survival and development. Recycling biochemical components proved to be a key adaptation in surviving energetically challenging conditions, and the inability to clear defective organelles seems to be correlated with Parkinson’s disease. More than 30 autophagy-specific genes have been identified, but the details of how targets are selected and broken down remains unclear. Image: Autophagy in the act of recycling, in a liver cell. (Wikimedia Commons via Chen et al., PLOS ONE, 2013)
Noboru Mizushima, University of Tokyo
Yoshinori Ohsumi, Tokyo Institute of Technology The process of autophagy – during which cells consume seemingly obsolete bits of cellular machinery – had been known since the 1950s, but when Ohsumi, Mizushima, and Klionsky started to examine the process in the late 1980s, they found that autophagy played a critical role in cell survival and development. Recycling biochemical components proved to be a key adaptation in surviving energetically challenging conditions, and the inability to clear defective organelles seems to be correlated with Parkinson’s disease. More than 30 autophagy-specific genes have been identified, but the details of how targets are selected and broken down remains unclear. Image: Autophagy in the act of recycling, in a liver cell. (Wikimedia Commons via Chen et al., PLOS ONE, 2013)