Autophagy is a central lysosomal degradation pathway required for maintaining cellular homeostasis and its dysfunction is associated with numerous human diseases. In a paper publishing on January 22, 2016, Dr. Chao Tong ‘s group in Zhejiang University tested around 1200 chemically induced mutations on the X-chromosome in Drosophila fat body clones and discovered that shibire (shi) plays an essential role in starvation-induced autophagy. Shi encodes a dynamin protein required for fission of clathrin-coated vesicles from the plasma membrane during endocytosis. They showed that Shi is dispensable for autophagy initiation and autophagosome‒lysosome fusion, but required for lysosomal/autolysosomal acidification. They also showed that other endocytic core machinery components like clathrin and AP2 play similar but not identical roles in regulating autophagy and lysosomal function as dynamin. Previous studies suggested that dynamin directly regulates autophagosome formation and autophagic lysosome reformation (ALR) through its excision activity. In this paper, they provide evidence that dynamin also regulates autophagy indirectly by regulating lysosomal function.
Ms. Xue-fei Fang, Mr. Jia Zhou are the leading authors of this study. This study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Basic Research Program of China, and Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education.
