327 Pages 70 B/W Illustrations
    by CRC Press

    Starting in the early 1970s, a type of programmed cell death called apoptosis began to receive attention. Over the next three decades, research in this area continued at an accelerated rate. In the early 1990s, a second type of programmed cell death, autophagy, came into focus. Autophagy has been studied in mammalian cells for many years. The recent application of the yeast genetic system has allowed the field to expand rapidly. Continued studies in these and other eukaryotic systems are likely to provide tremendous insight into autophagy, particularly at the mechanistic level. Autophagy is a process in which a cell carries out “self eating” either in response to starvation or various hormonal cues. This process occurs in all eukaryotic cells. It plays a normal role in cellular physiology but has received tremendous attention in the last few years because it has been shown to correlate with various diseases in humans. For example, defects in autophagy have been linked to cancer, cardiomyopathy and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. One of the most distinctive features of this book is that it is the only comprehensive book (actually, the only book at all) available on this topic. It covers essentially all current areas of autophagy, including research in animal cells, yeast, Drosophila, C. elegans and plants. The authors are recognized experts in the field. The book is written at a level that is appropriate for both experts in the field and newcomers.

    Preface 1. Autophagy: An Overview 2. Structural Aspects of Mammalian Autophagy 3. Signaling Pathways in Mammalian Autophagy 4. Regulation of Mammalian Autophagy by Protein Phosphorylation 5. Regulation of Autophagy by the Target of Rapamycin (Tor) Proteins 6. Macroautophagy in Yeast 7. Cytoplasm to Vacuole Targeting 8. Microautophagy 9. Microautophagy of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Nucleus 10. Glucose-Induced Pexophagy in Pichiapastoris 11. Selective Degradation of Peroxisomes in the Methylotrophic Yeast Hansenula polymorpha 12. Chaperone-Mediated Autophagy 13. Vacuolar Import and Degradation 14. Ubiquitin-Mediated Vacuolar Sorting and Degradation 15. Mammalian Homologues of Yeast Autophagy Proteins 16. Autophagy in Plants 17. Autophagy in Caenorhabditis elegans 18. Role of Autophagy in Developmental Cell Growth and Death: Insights from Drosophila 19. Trafficking of Bacterial Pathogens to Autophagosomes 20. Autophagy and Cancer 21. Autophagy in Neural Function and Neuronal Death 22. Autophagy and Neuromuscular Diseases 23. Autophagocytosis and Programmed Cell Death

    Biography

    Daniel Klionsky, Abram Sager Collegiate Professor of Life Sciences, University of Michigan, Life Sciences Institute and the Departments of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and of Biological Chemistry Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.