As my week brimming with learning comes to an end, I find myself reflecting on the incredible experience I had at this year's EMBO Conference, "Autophagy Across Scales." Not only was the conference held in one of the most beautiful places on Earth—Sorrento, Italy (seriously, check it out and stay at the campsite if you can (picture))—but it was also an event of exceptionally high caliber. The presentations were remarkably diverse, and each speaker did an outstanding job of conveying their research and insights.
One amusing aspect was noticing how many parallels I could draw between the field of autophagy and my own area of expertise, the complement system. Autophagy research is a tight-knit global community focused on a family of proteins that are highly conserved throughout evolution. This involves at least 40 interacting proteins with well-established canonical functions, and the field is increasingly exploring their non-canonical roles. It's truly astonishing how similar different research fields can be, even though each uses its own specialized vocabulary.
This week felt like an intensive beginner's course in autophagy for me. My main take-home messages revolved around understanding how to determine autophagy—not just through associated proteins but also through related changes known as "autophagy flux." This concept mirrors the complement system, where activation is the crucial factor. I also learned that autophagy is studied across a multitude of organisms, including plants, yeast cells, C. elegans, Drosophila, mice and of course human cells. Unfortunately, the autophagy proteins often have different names in different organisms despite performing similar functions, which can be a bit confusing.
Canonical autophagy is responsible for removing "junk" from the cell, such as defective organelles, and it helps ensure cell survival during nutrient deprivation. Interestingly, fasting can be incredibly beneficial for optimizing the autophagy system's performance. I also discovered that besides macroautophagy, there are processes like lysophagy, mitophagy, ER-phagy, secretory phagy, and simaphagy (did not figure out what this is). Notably, macroautophagy decreases with age, but mitophagy—at least in the eye—increases, as highlighted in Patricia Boya's talk. Additionally, cellular tight contact, as seen in RPE cells, can reduce autophagy compared to loose cell layers, a point discussed in Alexandra Stolz's presentation. (Just to give you some insides.)
To wrap up, this week has reinforced the idea that while we may all be specialized in our own fields—which often seem worlds apart—we are continually brought together through shared concepts and collaborative learning. The intersections between different areas of research not only enrich our understanding but also pave the way for innovative discoveries.
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