Chapter 4 - Regulation of Autophagy by microRNAs

Abstract

Autophagy is a cellular survival pathway that is responsible for the degradation of cellular constituents such as long-lived proteins and organelles. Autophagy is highly regulated by various signaling pathways including the mTOR, AKT and AMPK pathways. Moreover, conditions resulting in cellular stress such as hypoxia or pathogen entry might activate autophagy. Being at the crossroads of various cellular response pathways, dysregulation of autophagy might result in pathological states including cancer, myopathies or neurodegenerative diseases. Therefore, discovery of novel proteins and pathways regulating autophagy is important for both basic and clinical scientists. Recently, microRNAs were introduced as novel regulators of autophagy. microRNAs are non-protein-coding small RNAs that control cellular levels of transcripts and proteins through post-trancriptional mechanisms. This chapter summarizes the current knowledge of microRNA regulation of autophagy and attempts to integrate this novel layer of regulation into the known autophagy pathways.