The emerging role of acetylation in the regulation of autophagy

Abstract

Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved catabolic process through which different components of the cells are sequestered into double-membrane cytosolic vesicles called autophagosomes, and fated to degradation through fusion with lysosomes. Autophagy plays a major function in many physiological processes including response to different stress factors, energy homeostasis, elimination of cellular organelles and tissue remodeling during development. Consequently, autophagy is strictly controlled and post-translational modifications such as phosphorylation and ubiquitination have long been associated with autophagy regulation. In contrast, the importance of acetylation in autophagy control has only emerged in the last few years. In this review, we summarize how previously identified histone acetylases and deacetylases modify key autophagic effector proteins, and discuss how this has an impact on physiological and pathological cellular processes.

Keywords: :

• ATG genes
• FOXO
• Huntington disease
• acetylation
• autophagy
• deacetylation
• lysine
• post-translational modification
• protein aggregates

Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest

No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

Acknowledgments

We thank Andrew Saurin and Lajos Laszlo for critical reading of the manuscript. Research in the author’s laboratory is supported by the CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université and grants from CEFIPRA, FRM, ANR and ARC. We apologize to any investigator whose work owing to space limitation was not covered thoroughly or directly cited.