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Drosophila as a model system to study autophagy

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Abstract

Originally identified as a response to starvation in yeast, autophagy is now understood to fulfill a variety of roles in higher eukaryotes, from the maintenance of cellular homeostasis to the cellular response to stress, starvation, and infection. Although genetics and biochemical studies in yeast have identified many components involved in autophagy, the findings that some of the essential components of the yeast pathway are missing in higher organisms underscore the need to study autophagy in more complex systems. This review focuses on the use of the fruitfly, Drosophila melanogaster as a model system for analysis of autophagy. Drosophila is an organism well-suited for genetic analysis and represents an intermediate between yeast and mammals with respect to conservation of the autophagy machinery. Furthermore, the complex biology and physiology of Drosophila presents an opportunity to model human diseases in a tissue specific and analogous context.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (R01 AR057352) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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  1. Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, New Research Building/RM 339, 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Jonathan Zirin & Norbert Perrimon

  2. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Norbert Perrimon

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  1. Jonathan Zirin
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Correspondence to Norbert Perrimon.

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This article is published as part of the special issue on Autophagy

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Zirin, J., Perrimon, N. Drosophila as a model system to study autophagy. Semin Immunopathol 32, 363–372 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00281-010-0223-y

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