Abstract:

Autophagy (self-eating) is an evolutionarily conserved catabolic process to recycle damaged organelles or proteins in cells. Autophagy plays an important role in development and ageing and has been associated with diverse human diseases such as cancer, neurodegeneration and pathogen infection. The key process in autophagy, formation of double-membraned autophagosome, is a highly dynamic process with average lifetime of ca. 10 min. Although genetic approaches have been useful to identify genes involved in autophagy, they are lack of spatiotemporal resolution and thereby the dynamics of phenotypic change cannot be followed, making it challenging to dissect molecular mechanisms of highly dynamic process like autophagy. My lab has developed novel chemo-optogenetic approaches that enable to control protein function with high spatial and temporal precision in cells. In this talk, I will show the recent progress how we use these approaches to gain new insights into autophagy mechanisms.