Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Autophagy is a word originating from the Greek words auto, meaning "self", and phagein, meaning "eating". It is a process used by cells to degrade and recycle damaged structures, to trap and destroy invading bacteria and viruses, and to break down non-essential cellular components to re-use them as energy during periods of starvation. An inability to properly carry out this process can result in numerous diseases including various neurodegenerative diseases, heart diseases, infections and cancer. Autophagy begins with the cell rapidly encapsulating the material to be degraded within a specialized compartment called the autophagosome (a process lasting about 10 minutes). How the cell regulates the formation of this capsule is largely unknown due to technical difficulties associated with studying such rapid events. This proposal aims to develop and employ new technologies to make studying the autophagosome easier. We will use specially designed chemicals to rapidly relocate proteins to and from the autopahgosome and watch how this impacts formation of the capsule in real-time using live-cell microscopy. Understanding how the capsule is formed will help us figure out how the inability to properly carry out autophagy leads to disease and ultimately identify new therapies for those diseases.