Advances in Autophagy Regulating Cell Metabolic Balance

Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved lysosome- or vacuole-dependent catabolic pathway in eukaryotes. Autophagy can be either selective or non-selective. Cells form autophagosomes by encapsulating the degraded products with double or multi-layer membrane, and then transport them to lysosomes to form autophagylysosomes and degrade cytotosolic substances by various enzymes. Autophagy contributes to maintaining the metabolic balance of cells, which is a mechanism of cell self-protection. Autophagy can be induced during nutritional deficiency, and can promote the utilization of nutrients and metabolites. It plays a vital role in the regulation of cell metabolism. Meanwhile, the metabolic status of cells affects autophagy in turn. In this review, the functions of different exceutive types of autophagy were summarized, including lipophagy, ferritinophagy, glycophagy, aggrephagy, mitophagy, pexophagy, reticulophagy and ribophagy.