Handling Editor: Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz
ABSTRACT
Under starvation conditions, cells degrade their own components via autophagy in order to provide sufficient nutrients to ensure their survival. However, even if starvation persists, the cell is not completely degraded through autophagy, implying the existence of some kind of termination mechanism. In the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, autophagy is terminated after 10–12 h of nitrogen starvation. In this study, we found that termination is mediated by re-phosphorylation of Atg13 by the Atg1 protein kinase, which is also affected by PP2C phosphatases, and the eventual dispersion of the pre-autophagosomal structure, also known as the phagophore assembly site (PAS). In a genetic screen, we identified an uncharacterized vacuolar membrane protein, Tag1, as a factor responsible for the termination of autophagy. Re-phosphorylation of Atg13 and eventual PAS dispersal were defective in the Δtag1 mutant. The vacuolar luminal domain of Tag1 and autophagic progression are important for the behaviors of Tag1. Together, our findings reveal the mechanism and factors responsible for termination of autophagy in yeast.
Footnotes
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing or financial interests.
Author contributions
Conceptualization: S.K., T.N.; Methodology: Y.A.; Validation: Y.A.; Formal analysis: S.K.; Investigation: S.K., M.N., Y.O., A.M.; Resources: Y.A., T.Y.; Data curation: S.K., Y.O.; Writing - original draft: S.K.; Writing - review & editing: T.N.; Visualization: S.K.; Supervision: T.N.; Project administration: T.N.; Funding acquisition: T.N.
Funding
This research was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant number 16K18539 to S.K.) and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (grant numbers 16H01202 and 20H05326 to T.N.).
Supplementary information
Supplementary information available online at https://jcs.biologists.org/lookup/doi/10.1242/jcs.253682.supplemental
- Received September 2, 2020.
- Accepted January 19, 2021.
- © 2021. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd
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