Monitoring Mitophagy in Mammalian Cells

In eukaryotes, physiological cell functions rely on the preservation of the size and activity of the mitochondrial network. Mitophagy provides a key contribution in this setting by ensuring the removal of permeabilized or supernumerary mitochondria. Throughout the past decade, mitophagy has attracted considerable attention from both fundamental researchers and translational investigators, both of whom have called for the development of techniques that allow the precise quantification of mitophagy (as opposed to general autophagy). In this chapter, we present morphological, biochemical, and fluorescence-based approaches to measure autophagy in mammalian cells, and discuss recent progress in mouse models for the assessment of mitophagy in vivo.