自噬在心肌重构和衰老中的作用研究进展

Autophagy in cardiac metabolic control:novel mechanisms for cardiovascular disorders

过去的数十年中见证了在自噬研究方面的巨大进步。作为细胞中的质量控制机制,自噬的主要作用是清除胞内损坏的细胞器和大分子物质。适当的自噬活性对于维持细胞内稳态非常重要,但自噬活性的失调却会引起一系列的问题。除了将自噬仅仅当做是细胞内物质循环的机制,自噬在心脏代谢问题中的调节和变化亟需大量的研究和关注。因为心肌细胞的舒张和收缩耗费大量的能量,所以心脏功能紊乱多数以底物代谢产能与细胞能量消耗的协调问题为特征。对自噬在心肌代谢的调控与作用方面深入的认识将有希望把自噬作为治疗靶点。这篇综述探讨了在心肌代谢中自噬的角色和作用,同时发掘了自噬与心肌代谢失调中的关系。

Tremendous progress in autophagy research has been made in the past decades. Autophagy serves as a cytoplasmic quality control mechanism, and is mainly in charge of clearance of dysfunctional organelles and damaged macromolecules. Appropriate activity of autophagy is essential in the maintenance of cellular homeostasis while dysregulation of autophagy may contribute to a broad spectrum of mammalian diseases. Beyond a simple conceptualization of autophagy as a cell recycling mechanism, an urgent need to understand autophagic processes in the management of cardiac metabolic stress responses emerges. As contraction and relaxation of cardiac cells consumes large energy,alternations in coordination between metabolic substrate availability and cellular consumption are hallmark features of cardiac disorders. An expanded knowledge of the metabolic control of autophagy in hearts will facilitate targeting autophagy for therapeutics. In this review, we discuss the role of autophagy in cardiovascular metabolism and explore the underlying relationship between autophagy and cardiac disorders.