What is it about?
The endoplasmic reticulum is site of proteins, lipids, and oligosaccharides synthesis and modification, calcium ions storage, detoxification of endogenous and exogenous products. This review reports on constitutive and regulated lysosomal pathways that control variations in ER size and content. ER-phagy receptors (i.e., ER membrane proteins with luminal domains that engage the cytosolic autophagy machinery) are described as well as the autophagy gene products involved in selective ER-phagy.
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Why is it important?
Selective clearance of the ER is a relatively new field. It has originally been observed 40-50 years ago, but ER-phagy receptors (so far 4 mammalian and 2 yeast) have been described in the last 3 years. The capacity of cells to selectively regulate size and activity of functional subdomains of the ER opens a new field of research.
Perspectives
In most publications, ER-phagy has been induced on cell exposure to rather unspecific stimuli (such as drugs or nutrient deprivation) that indiscriminately activate macroautophagic pathways. It will be interesting to evaluate which and how physiologic/pathologic conditions affect ER turnover.
Maurizio Molinari
Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Bellinzona, Switzerland
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Endoplasmic reticulum turnover: ER-phagy and other flavors in selective and non-selective ER clearance, F1000Research, April 2018, Faculty of 1000, Ltd.,
DOI: 10.12688/f1000research.13968.1.
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