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REVIEW article

Front. Cell Dev. Biol.
Sec. Cell Death and Survival
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcell.2025.1518991
This article is part of the Research Topic The Contribution of Autophagy to Neuronal Metabolism View all 5 articles

Canonical and noncanonical autophagy: involvement in Parkinson's disease

Provisionally accepted
Maria Sakurai Maria Sakurai Tomoki Kuwahara Tomoki Kuwahara *
  • The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Japan

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Autophagy is the major degradation process in cells and is involved in a variety of physiological and pathological functions. While macroautophagy, which employs a series of molecular cascades to form ATG8-coated double membrane autophagosomes for degradation, remains the well-known type of canonical autophagy, microautophagy and chaperon-mediated autophagy have also been characterized. On the other hand, recent studies have focused on the functions of autophagy proteins beyond intracellular degradation, including noncanonical autophagy, also known as the conjugation of ATG8 to single membranes (CASM), and autophagy-related extracellular secretion. In particular, CASM is unique in that it does not require autophagy upstream mechanisms, while the ATG8 conjugation system is involved in a manner different from canonical autophagy.There have been many reports on the involvement of these autophagy-related mechanisms in neurodegenerative diseases, with Parkinson's disease (PD) receiving particular attention because of the important roles of several causative and risk genes, including LRRK2. In this review, we will summarize and discuss the contributions of canonical and noncanonical autophagy to cellular functions, with a special focus on the pathogenesis of PD.

    Keywords: noncanonical autophagy, CASM, autophagy-related secretion, Lysosome, Parkinson's disease, α-Synuclein, LRRK2

    Received: 29 Oct 2024; Accepted: 15 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Sakurai and Kuwahara. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Tomoki Kuwahara, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Japan

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.