Recommend Autophagy to your librarian for 2008. Download form here.

Sign up for Table of Contents Alerts!

home subscribe search archive forthcoming

Email this page Print this page

Article Addendum

The Regulation of Autophagy in Eukaryotic Cells: Do All Roads Pass through Atg1?

Joseph S. Stephan and Paul K. Herman

volume 2 | issue 2

 April/May/June 2006
Pages: 146 - 148

We now provide open access to journal articles published online for one year or more. This article may be downloaded at the following link:
 Download PDF

If the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.

The induction of autophagy appears to be tightly controlled in all eukaryotic cells. This highly conserved, degradative process is induced by a variety of signals, including nutrient deprivation, and is generally thought to be refractory to cell growth. Recent work in the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, has suggested that the Atg1 protein kinase is at the center of this control. Atg1, and its associated proteins, appear to be directly targeted by multiple signaling pathways important for the control of both autophagy and cell growth. These pathways involve the small GTP-binding Ras proteins, the Tor protein kinases and the AMP-activated protein kinase, Snf1, respectively. A key question that remains is whether this regulatory paradigm has been evolutionarily conserved. In other words, is Atg1 the primary target of those signaling pathways responsible for coordinating growth with environmental influences in other eukaryotes? Here, we suggest that Atg1 is very likely to fulfill this role but that a truly definitive answer will require that we develop a better understanding of this protein kinase and its targets in all eukaryotes.


We now provide open access to journal articles published online for one year or more. This article may be downloaded at the following link:
 Download PDF

If the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.