Autophagy is a critical process for recycling of cytoplasmic materials during environmental stress, senescence and cellular remodeling. It is upregulated under a wide range of abiotic stress conditions and is important for stress tolerance. Autophagy is repressed by the protein kinase target of rapamycin (TOR), which is activated in response to nutrients and in turn upregulates cell growth and ...

Autophagy plays a role in deciding the fate of cells by inducing either survival or death. 1'S-1-acetoxychavicol acetate (ACA) is a phenylpropanoid isolated from rhizomes of Alpinia conchigera and has been reported previously on its apoptotic effects on various cancers. However, the effect of ACA on autophagy remains ambiguous. The aims of this study were to investigate the autophagy-inducing a...

IFNB1/interferon (IFN)-β belongs to the type I IFNs and exerts potent antiproliferative, proapoptotic, antiangiogenic and immunemodulatory functions. Despite the beneficial effects of IFNB1 in experimental breast cancers, clinical translation has been disappointing, possibly due to induction of survival pathways leading to treatment resistance. Defects in autophagy, a conserved cellular degrada...

Based on growing evidence linking autophagy to preconditioning, we tested the hypothesis that autophagy is necessary for cardioprotection conferred by ischemic preconditioning (IPC). We induced IPC with three cycles of 5 min regional ischemia alternating with 5 min reperfusion and assessed the induction of autophagy in mCherry-LC3 transgenic mice by imaging of fluorescent autophagosomes in cryo...

Autophagy is a complex cellular process having multiple roles, depending on tissue, physiological, or pathological conditions. Major post-translational regulators of autophagy are well known, however, they have not yet been collected comprehensively. The precise and context-dependent regulation of autophagy necessitates additional regulators, including transcriptional and post-transcriptional c...

PURPOSE Although autophagy occurs in most tumor cells following DNA damage, it is still a mystery how this DNA-damaging event turns on the autophagy machinery in multiple myeloma (MM) and how the functional status of autophagy impacts on its susceptibility to death in response to DNA-damaging chemotherapy. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN We investigate the effects of DNA damage on autophagy in MM cells a...

BACKGROUND The cellular recycling process of autophagy is emerging as a key player in several longevity pathways in Caenorhabditis elegans. Here, we identify a role for autophagy in long-lived animals lacking a germline and show that autophagy and lipid metabolism work interdependently to modulate aging in this longevity model. RESULTS Germline removal extends life span in C. elegans via gene...

Autophagy is a degradation process in which cells break down and recycle their cytoplasmic contents when subjected to environmental stress or during cellular remodeling. The Arabidopsis thaliana SnRK1 complex is a protein kinase that senses changes in energy levels and triggers downstream responses to enable survival. Its mammalian ortholog, AMPK, and yeast ortholog, Snf-1, activate autophagy i...

Leptin is an adipocyte-derived hormone and maintains adipose function under challenged conditions. Autophagy is also essential to maintain cellular homeostasis and regulate characteristics of adipose tissue. However, the effects of leptin on autophagy of adipocyte remain elusive. Here, we demonstrated endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and leptin were correlated with autophagy and inflammation b...

UNLABELLED The tumor-promoting functions of autophagy are primarily attributed to its ability to promote cancer cell survival. However, emerging evidence suggests that autophagy plays other roles during tumorigenesis. Here, we uncover that autophagy promotes oncogenic RAS-driven invasion. In epithelial cells transformed with oncogenic RAS, depletion of autophagy-related genes suppresses invasio...