title: Guidelines for monitoring autophagy in Caenorhabditis elegans.
abstract: The cellular recycling process of autophagy has been extensively characterized with standard assays in yeast and mammalian cell lines. In multicellular organisms, numerous external and internal factors differentially affect autophagy activity in specific cell types throughout the stages of organismal ontogeny, adding complexity to the analysis of autophagy in these metazoans. Here we summarize currently available assays for monitoring the autophagic process in the nematode C. elegans. A combination of measuring levels of the lipidated Atg8 ortholog LGG-1, degradation of well-characterized autophagic substrates such as germline P granule components and the SQSTM1/p62 ortholog SQST-1, expression of autophagic genes and electron microscopy analysis of autophagic structures are presently the most informative, yet steady-state, approaches available to assess autophagy levels in C. elegans. We also review how altered autophagy activity affects a variety of biological processes in C. elegans such as L1 survival under starvation conditions, dauer formation, aging, and cell death, as well as neuronal cell specification. Taken together, C. elegans is emerging as a powerful model organism to monitor autophagy while evaluating important physiological roles for autophagy in key developmental events as well as during adulthood.
authors.affiliation: a State Key Laboratory of Biomacromolecules; Institute of Biophysics; Chinese Academy of Sciences ; Beijing , China.
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Jessica T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Malene
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hansen
authors.forename: Kailiang
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.forename: Attila L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Kovács
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kumsta
authors.forename: Louis R
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Lapierre
authors.forename: Renaud
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Legouis
authors.forename: Long
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Qun
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Alicia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Meléndez
authors.forename: Eyleen J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: O'Rourke
authors.forename: Ken
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sato
authors.forename: Miyuki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sato
authors.forename: Xiaochen
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Fan
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Wu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001343:Autophagy; D001681:Biological Assay; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000166:cytology* / Q000196:embryology; D047108:Embryonic Development; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D008954:Models, Biological
keywords: ASEL, ASE left; ASER, ASE right; ATG, autophagy-related; C. elegans; ER, endoplasmic reticulum; GFP, green fluorescent protein; LC3; MO, membranous organelle; PGL, P-granule abnormality; RER, rough endoplasmic reticulum; SQST, SeQueSTosome related protein; SQSTM1; TEM, transmission electron microscopy; autophagy; development; epg, ectopic PGL granules; lgg-1, LC3, GABARAP and GATE-16 family