All you need to know when studying autophagy
Recently years have witnessed the explosive interests in autophagy in biology. Autophagy, originally considered as a simple catabolic process, has been implicated in various diseases including cancer, neurodegenerative disease, infectious disease and cardiovascular disease. Despite the rapid progression in deciphering functional roles of autophagy in pathology, the technical development to detect and quantify autophagy is lagging. Autophagy, as a dynamic process, is particularly difficult to quantify and the experimental data are frequently subjected to misinterpretations.
A recent review article in Cell provides all possible means to examine autophagy. The cons and pros of each method are discussed in great detail. The paper by Levine and colleagues sets a gold standard in the field of autophagy. Combined with another article in Autophagy by Klionsky and colleagues in 2008, these papers will help to clarify misconceptions and possibly serve as textbook in autophagy study. ...
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