Mitophagy

Mitophagy refers to a special form of autophagy that refers to the degradation of mitochondria. For example, a mitochondrion in a liver cell has a lifetime of 10 days. After that, it is degraded by autophagy (autophagy).

Autophagy (from Greek autóphagos =consuming itself) refers to a widespread and conserved intracellular lysosomal degradation process in eukaryotic cells that is upregulated in a starvation situation. In this process, cellular cytosolic material such as misfolded proteins or damaged cell organelles are degraded in a controlled manner (Saha S et al.2018).
The autophagy degradation pathway plays a fundamental role in cellular homeostasis and is mediated by evolutionarily conserved autophagy-related (ATG) genes (Levine B et al.2019).

The regulated degradation of "cell detritus" prevents negative effects on cellular functions and ultimately restores molecules such as amino acids, fatty acids, or carbohydrates to the cell for anabolic processing. As a cell ages, autophagocytosis decreases, resulting in decreased formation of autophagic vacuoles and defective fusion of these vacuoles with lysosomes (Saha S et al.2018).

1. D'Arcy MS (2019) Cell death: a review of the major forms of apoptosis, necrosis and autophagy. Cell Biol Int 43:582-592
2. Levine B et al.(2019) Biological Functions of Autophagy Genes: A Disease Perspective. Cell176:11-42.
3. Saha S et al.(2018) Autophagy in health and disease: A comprehensive review. Biomed Pharmacother104:485-495.