More Evidence for Defects in the Formation of Autophagosomes to be Important in the Age-Related Decline of Autophagy

Autophagy is a collection of cellular maintenance processes that act to recycle damaged structures in the cell, thereby maintaining cell health and function. On the one hand, the efficiency of autophagy declines with age, and this loss of function is associated with numerous age-related diseases, particularly of the central nervous system and its population of very long-lived neurons. On the other hand, increased autophagy is an important component of many of the interventions shown to slow aging in short-lived species, such as via calorie restriction. A fair number of research groups are working on ways to upregulate autophagy in our species, but this has been going on for a while with little concrete movement towards the clinic.

Autophagy is a complicated process of multiple steps, and at every step there are plausible proximate causes for a faltering of the system with age. The formation of autophagosomes to encapsulate materials to be recycled can break down, as is the case in today's open access paper. The mechanisms by which autophagosomes are transported to a lysosome for deconstruction of their contents are degraded. The lysosome itself becomes filled with metabolic waste that it struggles to break down, making it bloated and inefficient.

In the case of defects relating to autophagosomes it is unclear as to why the breakage happens, how it relates to the underlying molecular damage that causes aging. Given this, approaches to therapy tend to focus on ove...

Source: Fight Aging! - July 22, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs