Before  Using

• What is Autophagy?

  Autophagy (or autophagocytosis) is the basic catabolic mechanism that involves cell degradation of unnecessary or dysfunctional cellular components through the actions of lysosomes and other organelles. There are several forms of autophagy, each of which involves delivering intracellular cargo to lysosomes for degradation. What makes the researchers interested in autophagy is that autophagy-related genes (the ATG genes) are conserved from yeast to mammals.They regulate the cannibalism of intracellular cytoplasm, proteins,and organelles,although we know little about autophagy-related-genes. Thus,many problems about mechanism of autophay remian unresolved and many researcher are struggling to find more in this aspect.

  
  
  
  

  What functions does Autophagy have?

  In healthy cells,autophagy provides a routine “garbage disposal” service to cells, eliminating damaged components that could otherwise become toxic. When cells are in starvation, autophagy will provide a nutrient source ro promot survival. From the characteristics above, it is easy to conclude that autophagy can protect body from diseases.
  
  What talked above are functions of autophagy in normal cells.
  
  However, in disease cells, abnormal of autophagy is frequently appeared. Studies show that autophagy plays a 'Double-edged sword' function in cells of diseases. For example, at the early stage of disease, autophagy may show anti-disease functions in cells, which can protect the body indeed. On the contraty, at the later stages of disease, autophagy will accelerate the development of disease.For the phenomenon above, research of relationship between autophagy and disease will be an interesting thing.
  
  The picture below shows more details about functions of autophagy.







What Link does Autophagy and Disease Have

More and more studies proved autophagy is now widely implicated in pathophysiological processes (e.g. cancer, metabolic and neurodegenerative disorders, cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases) and physiological responses to exercise and aging.However,it is pity that details of autophagy and diseases are not very clear. Thus it will have a significant affect if we can find out the link between autophagy and diseases clearly. Interestingly, autophagy shows "Double-edged sword" function in disease, whcich attract many researchers' attentions.

The picture below shows the functions we already known about autophagy and disease.