Autophagosomes fuse to phagosomes and facilitate the degradation of apoptotic cells in Caenorhabditis elegans
- Baylor College of Medicine, United States
Abstract
Autophagosomes are double-membrane intracellular vesicles that degrade protein aggregates, intracellular organelles, and other cellular components. During the development of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, many somatic and germ cells undergo apoptosis. These cells are engulfed and degraded by their neighboring cells. We discovered a novel role of autophagosomes in facilitating the degradation of apoptotic cells using a real-time imaging technique. Specifically, the double-membrane autophagosomes in engulfing cells are recruited to the surfaces of phagosomes containing apoptotic cells and subsequently fuse to phagosomes, allowing the inner vesicle to enter the phagosomal lumen. Mutants defective in the production of autophagosomes display significant defects in the degradation of apoptotic cells, demonstrating the importance of autophagosomes to this process. The signaling pathway led by the phagocytic receptor CED-1, the adaptor protein CED-6, and the large GTPase dynamin (DYN-1) promotes the recruitment of autophagosomes to phagosomes. Moreover, the subsequent fusion of autophagosomes with phagosomes requires the functions of the small GTPase RAB-7 and the HOPS complex components. Further observations suggest that autophagosomes provide apoptotic cell-degradation activities in addition to and in parallel of lysosomes. Our findings reveal that, unlike the single-membrane, LC3-associated phagocytosis (LAP) vesicles reported for mammalian phagocytes, the canonical double-membrane autophagosomes facilitate the clearance of C. elegans apoptotic cells. These findings add autophagosomes to the collection of intracellular organelles that contribute to phagosome maturation, identify novel crosstalk between the autophagy and phagosome maturation pathways, and discover the upstream signaling molecules that initiate this crosstalk.
Data availability
We provide the numerical data for the figures: 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 , and S6
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
NIH Office of the Director (R01GM067848)
- Zheng Zhou
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2022, Peña-Ramos et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Autophagosomes fuse to phagosomes and facilitate the degradation of apoptotic cells in Caenorhabditis elegans
eLife 11:e72466.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.72466
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