Abstract

Autophagy is a physiological and evolutionarily conserved phenomenon maintaining homeostatic functions like protein degradation and organelle turnover. It is rapidly upregulated under conditions leading to cellular stress, such as nutrient or growth factor deprivation, providing an alternative source of intracellular building blocks and substrates for energy generation to enable continuous cell survival. Yet accumulating data provide evidence that the autophagic machinery can be also recruited to kill cells under certain conditions generating a caspase-independent form of programed cell death (PCD), named autophagic cell death. Due to increasing interest in nonapoptotic PCD forms and the development of mammalian genetic tools to study autophagy, autophagic cell death has achieved major prominence, and is recognized now as a legitimate alternative death pathway to apoptosis. This chapter aims at summarizing the recent data in the field of autophagy signaling and autophagic cell death.

Keywords

AutophagyBiologyCell biologyProgrammed cell deathZoologyGeneticsApoptosis

MeSH Terms

AnimalsApoptosisAutophagyHumans

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Publication Info

Year
2007
Type
review
Volume
78
Pages
217-245
Citations
434
Access
Closed

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Cite This

Devrim Gözüaçık, Adi Kimchi (2007). Autophagy and Cell Death. Current topics in developmental biology/Current Topics in Developmental Biology , 78 , 217-245. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0070-2153(06)78006-1

Identifiers

DOI
10.1016/s0070-2153(06)78006-1
PMID
17338918

Data Quality

Data completeness: 86%