Assessing pexophagy in mammalian cells

Abstract

In mammalian cells several hundred peroxisomes are maintained by a balance between the biogenesis and turnover by peroxisome homeostasis. Pexophagy, a form of autophagy specific for peroxisomes, is the main pathway for peroxisome degradation, but molecular mechanisms of mammalian pexophagy are largely unknown. This is due to the lack of well-established pexophagy-inducing conditions in mammalian cells. Recently, several conditions that induce pexophagy were described for mammalian cells, involving ubiquitin and adaptor proteins of autophagy. In this chapter, we describe the protocol for Pex3-induced pexophagy, the more readable and highly inducible pexophagy condition in mammalian cells.