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Published on: September 17, 2020
Autophagy and pluripotency: self-eating your way to eternal youth
Yi Xu1, Xiaolu Yang2
1Department of Cancer Biology and Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA; Shanghai Key Laboratory of Metabolic Remodeling and Health, Institute of Metabolism and Integrative Biology, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
Abstract:
Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) can self-renew indefinitely in culture while retaining the potential to differentiate into virtually all normal cell types in the adult animal. Due to these remarkable properties, PSCs not only provide a superb system to investigate mammalian development and model diseases, but also hold promise for regenerative therapies. Autophagy is a self-digestive process that targets proteins, organelles, and other cellular contents for lysosomal degradation. Here, we review recent literature on the mechanistic role of different types of autophagy in embryonic development, embryonic stem cells (ESCs), and induced PSCs (iPSCs), focusing on their remodeling functions on protein, metabolism, and epigenetics. We present a perspective on unsolved issues and propose that autophagy is a promising target to modulate acquisition, maintenance, and directed differentiation of PSCs.
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