Autophagy degrades liquid droplets, but not aggregates, of proteins
Saturday, February 15, 2020 - 15:40
in Biology & Nature
Autophagy is a mechanism through which cellular protein is degraded. Selective autophagy had been thought to prevent the onset of diseases, but the state of proteins in which they could be efficiently degraded had been unclear. A team of scientists has discovered that autophagy is effective for selectively degrading protein in a state of liquid droplet that is formed through liquid-liquid phase separation but does poorly with the degradation of protein in aggregation.