Mammalian Atg8s: One is simply not enough

Yeast Atg8, a key factor in the autophagic process, is a ubiquitin-like protein that undergoes a unique conjugation to phosphatidylethanolamine (PE). Atg8 plays a dual role in early stages of autophagosome formation: It was implicated in recruitment of cargo proteins such as Atg19 and Atg32 for Cvt and mitophagy, respectively, and in autophagosome biogenesis, serving as an elongation factor by mediating membrane hemi-fusion. Similarly, the mammalian Atg8 proteins, LC3s and GABARAPs, recruit cargo into autophagosomes by binding to adaptor proteins such as p62, NBR1 and Nix. These functions, however, are not essential for bulk autophagic flux. Other studies in which the activity of the mammalian Atg8s was blocked either by knockout of the E2-like enzyme Atg3 or by using a dominant negative mutant of the promiscuous protease Atg4B revealed, in agreement with the yeast Atg8 data, that the mammalian factors are crucial for the formation of normal and mature autophagosomes. While it seems that the single yeast Atg8 and the mammalian Atg8s share similar roles, it is still unclear why the mammalian system employs several homologs. Recent publications demonstrated that the mammalian Atg8s differ in their cargo specificity, as Nix, for example, binds exclusively to GABARAP-L1. This may suggest that these proteins exhibit distinct activity also in autophagosome biogenesis. In our study we divided the mammalian Atg8s into two subfamilies of homologs based on amino acid similarity, the LC3 and GABARAP/GATE-16 subfamilies, and tested their essentiality and role in autophagy. In agreement with previous studies we found that the mammalian Atg8s are essential for autophagy but, more importantly, that each of these subfamilies has a distinct role in the process of autophagosome biogenesis.