Autophagy as a promoter of longevity: insights from model organisms

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

<p class="first" id="P3">Autophagy is a conserved process that catabolizes intracellular components to maintain energy homeostasis and to protect cells against stress. Autophagy has crucial roles during development and disease, and evidence accumulated over the past decade indicates that autophagy also has a direct role in modulating ageing. In particular, elegant studies using yeasts, worms, flies and mice have demonstrated a broad requirement for autophagy-related genes in the lifespan extension observed in a number of conserved longevity paradigms. Moreover, several new and interesting concepts relevant to autophagy and its role in modulating longevity have emerged. First, select tissues may require or benefit from autophagy activation in longevity paradigms, as tissue-specific overexpression of single autophagy genes is sufficient to extend lifespan. Second, selective types of autophagy may be crucial for longevity by specifically targeting dysfunctional cellular components and preventing their accumulation. And third, autophagy can influence organismal health and ageing even non-cell autonomously, and thus, autophagy stimulation in select tissues can have beneficial, systemic effects on lifespan. Understanding these mechanisms will be important for the development of approaches to improve human healthspan that are based on the modulation of autophagy. </p>

Related collections

Most cited references 87

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Autophagy maintains stemness by preventing senescence.

Laura García-Prat, Marta Martinez-Vicente, Eusebio Perdiguero … (2016)

During ageing, muscle stem-cell regenerative function declines. At advanced geriatric age, this decline is maximal owing to transition from a normal quiescence into an irreversible senescence state. How satellite cells maintain quiescence and avoid senescence until advanced age remains unknown. Here we report that basal autophagy is essential to maintain the stem-cell quiescent state in mice. Failure of autophagy in physiologically aged satellite cells or genetic impairment of autophagy in young cells causes entry into senescence by loss of proteostasis, increased mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress, resulting in a decline in the function and number of satellite cells. Re-establishment of autophagy reverses senescence and restores regenerative functions in geriatric satellite cells. As autophagy also declines in human geriatric satellite cells, our findings reveal autophagy to be a decisive stem-cell-fate regulator, with implications for fostering muscle regeneration in sarcopenia.

0 comments Cited 566 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Neural mechanisms of ageing and cognitive decline.

Nicholas A. Bishop, Tao Lu, Bruce A. Yankner (2010)

During the past century, treatments for the diseases of youth and middle age have helped raise life expectancy significantly. However, cognitive decline has emerged as one of the greatest health threats of old age, with nearly 50% of adults over the age of 85 afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. Developing therapeutic interventions for such conditions demands a greater understanding of the processes underlying normal and pathological brain ageing. Recent advances in the biology of ageing in model organisms, together with molecular and systems-level studies of the brain, are beginning to shed light on these mechanisms and their potential roles in cognitive decline.

0 comments Cited 434 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Mitochondrial pathology and apoptotic muscle degeneration in Drosophila parkin mutants.

Jessica C Greene, Alexander J. Whitworth, Isabella J Kuo … (2003)

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder characterized by loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra. Several lines of evidence strongly implicate mitochondrial dysfunction as a major causative factor in PD, although the molecular mechanisms responsible for mitochondrial dysfunction are poorly understood. Recently, loss-of-function mutations in the parkin gene, which encodes a ubiquitin-protein ligase, were found to underlie a familial form of PD known as autosomal recessive juvenile parkinsonism (AR-JP). To gain insight into the molecular mechanism responsible for selective cell death in AR-JP, we have created a Drosophila model of this disorder. Drosophila parkin null mutants exhibit reduced lifespan, locomotor defects, and male sterility. The locomotor defects derive from apoptotic cell death of muscle subsets, whereas the male sterile phenotype derives from a spermatid individualization defect at a late stage of spermatogenesis. Mitochondrial pathology is the earliest manifestation of muscle degeneration and a prominent characteristic of individualizing spermatids in parkin mutants. These results indicate that the tissue-specific phenotypes observed in Drosophila parkin mutants result from mitochondrial dysfunction and raise the possibility that similar mitochondrial impairment triggers the selective cell loss observed in AR-JP.