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Brief Report

Autophagy is Required for Dietary Restriction-Mediated Life Span Extension in C. elegans

Kailiang Jia and Beth Levine

volume 3 | issue 6

November/December 2007
Pages: 597 - 599

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Dietary restriction extends life span in diverse species including Canorhabditis elegans. However, the downstream cellular targets regulated by dietary restriction are largely unknown. Autophagy, an evolutionary conserved lysosomal degradation pathway, is induced under starvation conditions and regulates life span in insulin signaling C. elegans mutants. We now report that two essential autophagy genes (bec-1 and Ce-atg7) are required for the longevity phenotype of the C. elegans dietary restriction mutant (eat-2ad1113) animals. Thus, we propose that autophagy mediates the effect, not only of insulin signaling, but also of dietary restriction on the regulation of C. elegans life span. Since autophagy and longevity control are highly conserved from C. elegans to mammals, a similar role for autophagy in dietary restriction-mediated life span extension may also exist in mammals.

Authors

Kailiang Jia

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Beth Levine

Department of Internal Medicine; Department of Microbiology; University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Dallas, Texas USA



We now provide open access to journal articles published online for one year or more. This article may be downloaded at the following link:
 Download PDF

If the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.