In 2016 Yoshinori Ohsumi of the Tokyo Institute of Technology was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for their research on Autophagy. Autography is Greek for “self eating”. Its a fundamental housekeeping function of the cell where the cell digests different large internal structures and semipermanent proteins in a continual cleanup process. Scientist think this may have evolved as a response to starvation, where the cell ate some of its own parts in order to survive. It is now a tool the cells use as many different health benefits, including being able to resist infection and possibly even fight cancer. Autophagy is very important to cells like neurons, which usually live for a long time and need to be killed off in order to make room for new ones.
This process takes place in the cytoplasm of the cell. In addition to lysosomes, Autophagy is an important cleanup process the cell uses in order to avoid being clotted with unnecessary “trash”. They would even in some cases rip apart other organelles and proteins and either dispose of all the parts or piece them back together with good old parts and new parts in order to keep the cell running properly.
I’m very interested in autophagy because if scientists can learn to control it, it may be the cure to cancer. The cells can learn to eat out the cancerous parts and spit them out, so at the very least the cancer can stop spreading or slow it down in order to better treat it.
Chaylynn T.
What did they find out? Do they know what causes the process to start?
ReplyDeleteA. Wardell
So how did they find this out? what kind of "experiment" was done? Do they have any idea's on how to "control" this reaction?
ReplyDeleteDo we know of any applications of Autophagy that can be used in the near-future?
ReplyDelete-Ashley B.
If scientists find how to activate and start the autophagy process, the can be started within tumor cells, killing cancers. Autophagy is a way to destroy tumors from the inside out. All is needed it a way to begin and control this process.
Delete-M. Aldridge
Wow this is really impressive information and I would like to know more? Do you know if there is anything in particularly that makes cells start this process like maybe an enzyme that triggers it to start or any information on how it starts? It would be vary useful to know how we can start it up on cancer patients to target cancerous cells.
ReplyDeleteSteph. S.
Is autophagy more or less an immune response? We've known that different types of leukocytes (white blood cells) phagocytize pathogens and other debris in the blood stream and body. Interestingly, monocytes ( a type of leukocyte) actually leaves the blood stream and becomes a macrophage in order to eat different pathogens, etc. So are the cells mentioned in the article monocytes? Macrophages? or some other cell that is under the effect of autophagy?
ReplyDeleteR.T.
Fascinating! I wonder if this process could actually be controlled. If so, would it be an external or internal factor that would direct this process? It would be an interesting topic to study more in depth to discover the stipulations behind these specific cellular functions. -K.N
ReplyDeletewhat part of the cell is doing the "eating"? there are other clean up mechanisms in the cell. When does autophagy start to happen? Kh
ReplyDeleteThe way I learned about this in a previous class is that cells that know they are infected or know that they are old, so they will send out a receptor message that lets other cells know that it needs to be eaten. It's a very controlled process, unless of course the cell is cancerous. I know that explanation is not scientific at all, but that's basically how it works in a sense.
Delete-SN