ATG4

By Christina Towers, PhD

Sordaria macrospora is a filamentous fungus that serves as very useful system for scientific research due to a short life cycle and easy manipulation.  Just like any other model organism, it is important to have an effective loading control to validate experiments in the Sordaria macrospora.  In addition, the growth and morphogenesis of filamentous fungi is dependent on actin organization.  Actin is a very abundant protein across biological species and can transition between monomeric and filamentous states.  Actin has an alpha and beta isoform, both of which sha

Autophagy can be broken down into 4 main stages: phagophore nucleation, autophagosome elongation, autophagosome docking and fusion with a lysosome, and vesicle breakdown and degradation. ATG4B is one of four ATG4 homologs (ATG4A, ATG4B, ATG4C, and ATG4D) involved in autophagosome elongation. ATG4B encodes a 48 kDa protein called autophagin-1 that is a member of the C54 family of cysteine proteases.