Contents
28 February 2017
Vol 10, Issue 468
Vol 10, Issue 468
Editorial Guide
- Focus Issue: Autophagy as hero and villain
Context dictates whether autophagic responses to stress are beneficial or detrimental.
Research Article
- DDiT4L promotes autophagy and inhibits pathological cardiac hypertrophy in response to stress
The mTORC1 inhibitor DDiT4L prevents the increase in heart size caused by stress.
Reviews
- Retrograde signaling from autophagy modulates stress responses
Autophagy-related proteins regulate the activity of transcription factors that mediate stress-induced changes in gene expression.
- Mitochondrial homeostasis in adipose tissue remodeling
Degradation of mitochondria through autophagy determines adipocyte identity and function.
- Target acquired: Selective autophagy in cardiometabolic disease
Boosting the autophagic degradation of dysfunctional organelles could be used to treat various cardiometabolic diseases.
Podcast
- Science Signaling Podcast for 28 February 2017: Balancing autophagy in the stressed heart
The protein DDiT4L protects the heart from pathological hypertrophy by stimulating autophagy (Simonson et al. in 28 February 2017 issue).
Editors' Choice
- Hypoxia-induced plasticity in cancer cell migration
Hypoxia stimulates cancer cells to switch from collective migration to amoeboid migration.
- Ferroptosis-like cell death in plants
Heat stress induces a form of cell death in plants that is morphologically and biochemically similar to ferroptosis in animal cells.
- Papers of note in Science 355 (6327)
This week’s articles describe a method for engineering kinases so that they can be activated and inactivated with visible light and offer a molecular explanation for why mutations that are common in the blood cells of elderly people can promote atherosclerosis.
- Papers of note in Science Translational Medicine 9 (378)
This week’s articles describe a way to limit colonization of the skin by Staphylococcus aureus, a potential therapy for bladder cancer patients, and that autoimmunity associated with type 1 diabetes may begin in infancy.
- Papers of note in Nature 542 (7642)
This week’s articles demonstrate that fat cells release miRNAs that act on distant tissues, identify a mechanism whereby transcription factors protect B cells from malignant transformation, and show that some anticancer drugs may have the unintended consequence of increasing genomic instability in B cells.
About The Cover
Online Cover This week features a Focus Issue on autophagy, the process of cellular self-digestion. This Focus Issue includes a Research Article that reveals how autophagy limits pathological hypertrophy in the heart, a Review on how autophagic responses to stress contribute to cardiometabolic disease, a Review on how mitophagy determines adipocyte cell fate and function, and a Review on how autophagy itself can regulate transcriptional responses to stress. The image shows an ouroboros (a dragon eating its own tail) with an autophagosome for its spine. [Image: Ismail Sergin/Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO]