›› 2015, Vol. 58 ›› Issue (2): 210-216.

• REVIEW ARTICLES • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Progress in the research of autophagyrelated molecule Atg8 in lepidopteran insects

WANG Ying1,#, ZHANG Ye-Jun1,2,# , HUANG Hui1, LI Hong-Yan1,2, CUI Yu-Ying1, ZOU Wei1,2,*   

  1. (1. School of Life Sciences, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, Liaoning 116081, China; 2. Liaoning Key Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Medicine Development, Dalian, Liaoning 116081, China)
  • Online:2015-02-20 Published:2015-02-20

Abstract: Autophagy, a process of the cells to achieve the intracellular material recycling through the self-degradation of lysosome, plays an important role in insect cellular differentiation and individual development. Lepidopteran insects, belonging to the complete metamorphosis insects, could actualize metamorphosis reconstruction process by autophagy and apoptosis, and are the model organisms for studying the mechanisms of autophagy. Atg8 of lepidopteran insects, which is a homolog of microtubule associated protein 1 light chain 3 of mammals and the core protein family of autophagy-related protein, plays important roles in the formation of autophagosomes, the extension of membrane, the identification of specific substances, and so on. In this article we reviewed the Atg8 effect in autophagy pathway, the characterization of Atg8, the expression and distribution of Atg8, and the relationship between Atg8-PE/Atg8 and autophagic activity in lepidopteran insects. Atg8-PE is one of the ubiquitin-like conjugation systems, and plays a key role in autophagy. Sequence analysis showed that the structure of Atg8 in lepidopteran species is very similar to the homologous proteins of other eukaryotes, and especially its amino acid sequence is highly consistent with the homologous proteins of other insect species, revealing the highly conservative property of Atg8. During the different developmental stages of lepidopteran species, the expression and distribution of Atg8 are various in organs such as the midgut, salivary glands, ovary, fat body and silk glands, and different in nucleus and cytoplasm. The shuttling of Atg8 between nucleus and cytoplasm might exist in some cells at the pre-pupal stage. Through detecting the expression level of Atg8-PE or the change of Atg8 abundance inside the cell, we can evaluate the process of autophagy.

Key words: Lepidoptera, autophagy, autophagy-related protein (Atg), autophagosome, autophagic activity