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The role of autophagy in neonatal tissues: Just a response to amino acid starvation?

Stefano Schiaffino, Cristina Mammucari and Marco Sandri

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Autophagy is activated soon after birth in neonatal tissues and is essential for survival because mice deficient in Atg5 or Atg7 autophagy genes die within 1 day after birth. Amino acid starvation has been considered as a major deleterious effect of autophagy deficiency, since the concentration of amino acids in plasma was decreased by 20% in the two knockout models, whereas blood glucose and fatty acid levels were apparently not affected. However, autophagy may have other important functions in neonatal physiology, including glycogen degradation, programmed cell remodeling and response to oxidative stress.

Authors

Stefano Schiaffino

University of Padova

Cristina Mammucari

University of Padova

Marco Sandri

University of Padova

This is an open-access article

 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.