1. An appetite for destruction From self-eating to cell cannibalism as a neuronal survival strategy
- Author
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Koenraad Norga, Miloš R. Spasić, Patrick Callaerts, and Jeroen Poels
- Subjects
Programmed cell death ,Cell Survival ,Stimulation ,AMP-Activated Protein Kinases ,AMP-activated protein kinase ,Stress, Physiological ,medicine ,Autophagy ,Animals ,Drosophila Proteins ,Protein kinase A ,Molecular Biology ,Biology ,Neurons ,biology ,Mechanism (biology) ,Neurodegeneration ,AMPK ,Cell Biology ,medicine.disease ,Autophagic Punctum ,Cell biology ,Drosophila melanogaster ,Cytophagocytosis ,biology.protein ,Photoreceptor Cells, Invertebrate ,Human medicine - Abstract
Autophagy plays an important role in cellular survival by resupplying cells with nutrients during starvation or by clearing misfolded proteins and damaged organelles and thereby preventing degenerative diseases. Conversely, the autophagic process is also recognized as a cellular death mechanism. The circumstances that determine whether autophagy has a beneficial or a detrimental role in cellular survival are currently unclear. We recently showed that autophagy induction is detrimental in neurons that lack a functional AMPK enzyme (AMP-activated protein kinase) and that suffer from severe metabolic stress. We further demonstrated that autophagy and AMPK are interconnected in a negative feedback loop that prevents excessive and destructive stimulation of the autophagic process. Finally, we uncovered a new survival mechanism in AMPK-deficient neurons-cell cannibalism. ispartof: Autophagy vol:8 issue:9 pages:1401-1403 ispartof: location:United States status: published
- Published
- 2012