糖心视频

In a process that is remarkably close to how we take out our household trash, every single cell in your body has the ability to wrap up any unwanted material in a double-membrane sack and send it to be degraded and recycled in lysosomes, the cell incinerator.

And much like at home, if no one takes out the trash, it starts to pile up, and if that happens the cell will accumulate damage or eventually die.

In a new study by researchers from the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University has uncovered how the cells gear the process up and down, depending on the need, says Professor Fulvio Reggiori. The paper is in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

"We have identified the molecular 'switch' that tells the cell to start expanding the sack to fit the trash, which is akin to finding the gas and brake pedals on a garbage truck. And knowing how to start and stop the cleaning system opens doors to treatments where we need to either step on the gas and activate the cleaning to illnesses where bad cell materials start to 'pile up.' But it might also show us the way to hit the brakes on cancer cells that needs this process to survive."

This important regulator is called Ypt1/RAB1 and is a tiny part of a complicated process, and it requires more research before we can effectively translate the findings to usable treatments, explains Reggiori.

"Essentially, what happens in a cell is that an initial 'trash bag' is formed through a series of steps, but then it must increase in size to enwrap the material that must be destroyed. The enlargement of this sack occurs by the acquisition of lipids through a bridge that it established with the major lipid factory in the cell.

"When the bridge is formed, the Ypt1 switch essentially gives the green light to start expanding the sack. Before, we didn't know how the sack began to enlarge, but our study shows that Ypt1 is the gatekeeper by making sure to coordinate the supply of the building blocks of the sack and the machinery that grows it."

The study opens several new potential research avenues, he says.

"By uncovering this key regulatory step, the study provides important insight in autophagy that can be used by cell biologists, biomedical researchers, and drug developers targeting this process in diseases like cancer, neurodegeneration and infection, so it is a crucial step towards treatments of tomorrow."