Have you ever cleaned your room and found broken toys? Your cells have the same problem! Tiny parts inside them wear out every day. So cells clean up in a clever way called autophagy (pronounced aw-TOFF-uh-jee), which means "self-eating."
The cell wraps the junk in a little bubble, like trash in a bag. The bag goes to a recycling spot called the lysosome, where the junk is broken into tiny pieces. Then the cell uses those pieces to build new parts. Nothing goes to waste!
A scientist named Yoshinori Ohsumi studied baker's yeast, the stuff that makes bread rise, and found the genes that run this cleanup. We have very similar ones too. He won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Cleanup helps cells stay healthy and even fight some germs. As we get older, it can slow down, which may be part of how aging works. A tidy cell is a happy cell!
References
- The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2016, press release, NobelPrize.org: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2016/press-release/
- Takeshige K, Baba M, Tsuboi S, Noda T, Ohsumi Y. "Autophagy in yeast demonstrated with proteinase-deficient mutants and conditions for its induction." Journal of Cell Biology 119 (1992): 301–311.
What this is not. Education only. Stories on cells.com are not medical advice. cells.com does not diagnose, treat, prescribe, run laboratory tests, or ship kits.
Simon Ng is the founder of cells.com. He has spent more than a decade on biotech finance executive teams, including at Quark Pharmaceuticals and Adverum Biosciences, and holds an MBA.