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Encyclopedia of Signaling Molecules pp 1–15Cite as

ULK1

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:

Synonyms

ATG1; Unc-51 like autophagy activating kinase 1

Historical Background

ULK1 is a Ser/Thr protein kinase and centrally involved in autophagy. Autophagy is an intracellular degradation process which contributes to the elimination of damaged or long-lived proteins and/or organelles. Autophagy occurs at basal levels in most cell types and ensures cellular homeostasis. However, autophagy can also be actively induced upon stress, including the withdrawal of nutrients or growth factors, treatment with chemotherapeutics, or intracellular infections.

In 1993, Tsukada and Ohsumi reported the isolation and characterization of 15 yeast mutants defective in the accumulation of autophagic bodies in the vacuoles. In a mutant termed apg1 (autophagy), nitrogen starvation did not induce protein degradation, and the apg1 mutant lost viability faster than wild-type cells during nitrogen starvation (Tsukada and Ohsumi 1993). In 1997, Matsuura et al. reported that the APG1gene encodes a protein...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Molecular Medicine I, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University, Universitätsstr. 1, Building 23.12, Düsseldorf, 40225, Germany

    Björn Stork

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  1. Björn Stork
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  1. Dept. Biological Science, Department of Molecular Science and Tech College of Natural Science, Suwon, Korea (Republic of)

    Sangdun Choi

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Stork, B. (2016). ULK1. In: Choi, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Signaling Molecules. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6438-9_101817-1

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