title: MicroRNA: a third dimension in autophagy.
abstract: Autophagy is a catabolic process that allows cellular macromolecules to be broken down and recycled into metabolic precursors. It is a highly conserved, critical process, allowing cells to gain survival advantages under various stress situations due to growth and environmental changes. In the past few years, mounting evidence indicates that the post-transcriptional and translational controls mediated by non-coding miRNAs contribute significantly to autophagy in cancer. Such acute modulation of protein synthesis mediated by miRNAs provides cells with advantages in response to starvation, genotoxic stress and hypoxia. In this review, we highlight some of the important discoveries and molecular insights of miRNAs in regulating autophagy based on various cancer models.
authors.affiliation: Translational Research Laboratory, Department of Pathology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Haiyan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhai
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fesler
authors.forename: Jingfang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ju
mesh_terms: D001343:Autophagy / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology; D016923:Cell Death / Q000502:physiology; D049109:Cell Proliferation; D004249:DNA Damage / Q000502:physiology*; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D000860:Hypoxia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000502:physiology; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000378:metabolism*; D016159:Tumor Suppressor Protein p53 / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D035683:MicroRNAs; D012333:RNA, Messenger; D016159:Tumor Suppressor Protein p53