About this Research Topic

Background

The autophagic process has been identified as a degradative pathway: cargo, including entire organelles, is sequestered into double-membrane vesicles, known as autophagosomes, and addressed to lysosomes for degradation. Depending on the mechanisms responsible for cargo selection, three autophagic processes have been identified, i.e., macroautophagy, microautophagy, and chaperone-dependent autophagy.
Nevertheless, recent findings have suggested that the autophagic machinery may also have autophagy-independent functions and cooperate with the endo-lysosomal system in unconventional secretion processes.

The biogenesis of exosomes, a type of extracellular vesicles originating from the inward budding of the membrane of late endosomes, and released extracellularly upon exocytosis, closely resembles microautophagy. The secretion of leaderless proteins and Golgi-bypassing transmembrane proteins involves components of the autophagic machinery.
The dysfunction of the lysosomal degradation process is associated to increased autophagy-dependent secretion in several pathological conditions, such as cancer, metabolic and neurodegenerative disorders. Advancing our knowledge of the interplay between the degradative and secretory functions of the autophagy machinery is relevant to develop strategies to modulate these fundamental cell biology functions.

The aim of this Research Topic is to cover recent and novel research trends focused on the interplay between degradative and secretory functions of autophagy, as well as with the secretory functions of the endo-lysosomal system.
This Research Topic welcomes manuscripts addressing the role of the autophagic machinery in unconventional secretion, including the release of extracellular vesicles, in health and disease.

Areas to be covered in this Research Topic may include, but are not limited to:

1. Studies shedding light on genes and mechanisms involved in autophagy-dependent secretion

2. Investigations on autophagic machinery-dependent secretion of proteins and/or organelles

3. Studies focusing on the role of the autophagic machinery in extracellular vesicles release

4. Studies unraveling the role of autophagy-dependent secretion in pathological conditions, namely lysosomal storage disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, and cancer



We welcome different article types including Original Research, Reviews and Mini-Reviews, Methods, Brief Research Reports, and Perspectives. A full list of accepted article types, including descriptions, can be found at this link.

Keywords: Secretory autophagy, autophagy-dependent secretion, macroautophagy, microautophagy, chaperone mediated autophagy (CMA), exosomes, extracellular vesicles, unconventional secretion

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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