Dear Colleagues,

Macroautophagy is a programmed catabolic process involved in lysosomal-mediated degradation of cellular constituents. In response to diverse cellular stresses and environmental insults, macroautophagy is markedly induced to degrade various cellular components and organelles ranging from aggregated proteins, lipid droplets, and glycogen to damaged organelles and infected bacteria. Owing to its essential roles in cellular homeostasis and host defense, macroautophagy defects are tightly linked to a broad range of human conditions such as pathogen invasions; muscle, autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases; cancers, metabolic disorders; and aging. The intrinsic human relevance of macroautophagy leads to the intensive development of small molecules, reagents, and protocols to modulate or manipulate autophagic activities, which have a significant potential to prevent or treat diverse diseases.

This Special Issue aims to summarize the current understanding on the pivotal role that maintaining a proper autophagic activity plays in healthy and physiologic conditions and how its malfunctions could be detrimental to the levels of cell, tissue, organ, and even organism.

For this Special Issue, we encourage the submission of research articles and review articles that investigate aspects relevant to physiological and pathological autophagic events, including new therapeutic approaches and methods measuring the different forms of autophagy.

Additional topics include but are not limited to tissue homeostasis, metabolism, crosstalk between autophagy and other signaling pathways, proliferation, differentiation, and selective forms of autophagy.

We look forward to your contributions.

Assoc. Prof. Jae Man Lee

Guest Editor