News Finding: And thanks to their newly-developed in vitro approach, in future it will be possible to identify other proteins that operate in the fusion process.
Paper Finding: These findings strongly suggest that solely the R-SNA RE Ykt6 is required on autophagosomes for fusion, whereas the R-SNA RE Sec22 is dispensable during the autophagosome-vacuole fusion process.
News Context: These results help to understand autophagy and its underlying molecular processes better. And thanks to their newly-developed in vitro approach, in future it will be possible to identify other proteins that operate in the fusion process. Note: material may have been edited for length and content.
Paper Context: Whereas vam3Δsec22ts mutant autophagosomes fused normally with vacuoles at restrictive temperature, vam3Δykt6ts autophagosomes displayed substantially reduced fusion independent of the nature of the vacuolar and cytosolic fractions (Fig. These findings strongly suggest that solely the R-SNA RE Ykt6 is required on autophagosomes for fusion, whereas the R-SNA RE Sec22 is dispensable during the autophagosome-vacuole fusion process. Taken together, our findings reveal that autophagosome-vacuole fusion requires the action of the Q-SNA REs Vam3, Vam7, and Vti1 on the vacuole and the R-SNA RE Ykt6 on the autophagosome.