In a new paper published in eLife, my colleagues in the Denic Lab and I investigated how budding yeast (S. cerevisiae) breaks down damaged peroxisome organelles through a type of autophagy called “pexophagy.” Researchers who study “selective autophagy” processes, where only certain organelles are targeted for destruction, have long wondered how the cell selects the correct target for autophagy. This key selection process usually depends on a class of proteins called autophagy receptors, which target a diverse range of organelles and other targets for autophagic degradation. We wanted to understand how the autophagy receptor proteins are able to distinguish damaged organelles from their undamaged counterparts. In some cases, autophagy receptors are selectively recruited by membrane ligands that only appear on the surface of organelles following local damage. However, some other autophagy receptors natively residing on the membrane don’t fit this pattern recognition paradigm and need different mechanisms to describe their regulatory role in selective autophagy.
