Autophagy

Supported by in-house scientists and first-class technical platform, Creative Biolabs provides a full range of high-quality autophagy antibody products and services to facilitate your project success.

Background

Autophagy is the catabolic process that degrades cytoplasmic material via the lysosome. The process of macroautophagy was originally characterized in yeast, where the core autophagy-related proteins (ATGs) were identified. In this system, the multistep process of phagophore initiation and elongation as well as the conjugation machinery that mediate efficient autophagosome completion were determined and cloned to assess function. The mechanisms of starvation-induced autophagy as well as many of the selective autophagy processes were also modeled in yeast.

Fig.1 A Diagram of the process of autophagy. (Wikipedia)

Research Area of Autophagy in Different Species

• Zebrafish

Zebrafish is an ideal model in the development of autophagy due to their large cohort size and optical clarity. To date, they are becoming a promising model organism to study the role of autophagy in different pathologies. Publication of the core autophagy proteins and the zebrafish orthologues push forward the development of genetic manipulation of autophagy with siRNAs, morpholinos or CRISPR/Cas9. A plethora of tools have been created, such as transgenic and fluorescent reporter fish in the past few decades. For example, the main experiment in measuring autophagic turnover part is via flux or LC3-II turnover. Now, the single fluorophore labeled LC3 reporter fish and the tandem-tagged LC3-harboring the pH stable mCherry and the pH sensitive GFP have been created. Physiologically relevant transgenic models exist for numerous human diseases, particularly neurodegenerative pathologies, including Huntington's disease, tauopathy, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)8.

• Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans)

In C. elegans, paternal mitochondria were degraded by autophagy in developing embryos. This finding answered the question that why only maternal mitochondria are inherited in eukaryotes. Besides, autophagy in C. elegans was also associated with longevity and increased life span for genetic inhibition of many ATGs would suppress the extended life phenotype induced by dietary restriction.

• Drosophila melanogaster (D. melanogaster)

D. melanogaster models of autophagy have provided high impact findings, for autophagy in the tumor microenvironment was shown to be sufficient to initiate dormant tumor growth.

As a reliable provider for antibody products, Creative Biolabs supplies a collection of high-quality antibodies for our customers to ensure that our research customers find exactly what they need for their studies. In this autophagy-focused module you will find antibodies to those targets involved in autophagy. For further details, please feel free to contact us.

Our provided featured target antibody products include the followings, but not limited to: