The Effects of Autophagy Genes on Ageing

Abstract

Autophagy is defined as a catabolic bulk degradation pathway. In S.cerevisiae autophagy is defined as a single cell's adaptation to starvation. Ageing can be defined as a gradual and progressive deterioration of the health by the time. S.cerevisiae is one of the most important model organism in the field of ageing studies. It has been demonstrated that in different model organisms cellular ageing requires inhibiton of particular nutrient sensing pathways leads to extension or shorten replicative and chronological life span that would be linked by regulation of autophagic pathway. In our study, we screened 29 deletion mutants of autophagy genes in order to determine relation between autophagy and ageing. We found out that 6 mutants showed reduced replicative life span. Furthermore, possible roles of boric acid, as an autophagy inducer was elucidated on replicative and chronological life span. Boric acid did not incerease replicative or chronological life span, in oppose, it shortened life span in a dosedependent manner. Finally, to find out the link between autophagy and oxidative stress, we tested autophagy deficient cells for their hydrogen peroxide sensitivity. Absence of only five mutants rendered cells hydrogen peroxide sensitive. Overall, our results revealed that several mutants of autophagy related paths have shorter life spans compared to wild type cells and cells need to have an intact autophagy systems to benefit from life span extension.