A team led by Maria Leptin has shown in the fruit fly Drosophila that autophagy, a mechanism of stress responses in cells, plays an important role in wound healing: When a wound heals, the process of autophagy is initiated and regulated by the protein complex TORC1. This is a newly discovered function of autophagy and the first evidence that autophagy controls the formation of syncytia (multinucleated cells). While syncytia are also formed during the development of muscles or the placenta, their role in wound healing and the involvement of autophagy are new discoveries. The article, ‘Autophagy-mediated plasma membrane removal promotes the formation of epithelial syncytia’ has been published in The EMBO Journal … read more
More about Professor Maria Leptin
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