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Updated: Sep 27, 2025

Study of Protein-protein Interactions in Autophagy Research
Published on: September 9, 2017
A conserved interplay between FOXO and SNAI/snail in autophagy
Xiaowei Guo1,2, Xianjue Ma3, Lei Xue2,4
1School of Medicine, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, China.
Abstract:
Dysfunction of macroautophagy/autophagy has been implicated in homeostasis maintenance and contributes to various diseases. Yet the mechanisms that regulate autophagy have not been fully understood. In a recent study, we uncovered a coherent FOXO3-SNAI2 feed-forward regulatory loop in mammals that reinforces autophagy gene induction upon energy stress. Strikingly, a foxo-sna (snail) feed-forward circuit also exists in Drosophila, suggesting this regulating loop is evolutionarily conserved. Moreover, our results highlight that binding of FOXO3 to the DNA appears to be both necessary and sufficient to antagonize CRM1-dependent nuclear export, illustrating a critical role of DNA in regulating protein nuclear localization.
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