New research reveals more about how the brain’s own housekeeping service, a sophisticated mechanism that cleans up debris and trash left over from cellular activity, actually works.
Scientists have had a hard time figuring out exactly how the brain knows when to initiate this cellular “trash pickup.”
Now, researchers have identified a protein that’s key to the process, which is known as autophagy.
That protein, ATG-9, clocks synaptic activity and signals a need for increased autophagy, in which neuronal debris created by increased activity is engulfed and degraded.
Mutations that affect ATG-9 trafficking at neuronal junctions, known as synapses, may help explain the failure of autophagy to do its job during increased synaptic activity, a deficit which has been linked to several neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease.
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