Unsaturated fatty acid‐induced non‐canonical autophagy: unusual? or unappreciated?

Abstract

The breakdown of cellular components via autophagy is crucial for cellular homeo- stasis. In this issue of The EMBO Journal, Niso-Santano et al (2015) report the impor- tant observation that feeding cells with saturated or unsaturated fatty acids trig- gers mechanistically distinct autophagic responses. Feeding cells saturated fatty acid induced the canonical, BECN1/PI3K- dependent autophagy pathway. Conversely, the unsaturated fatty acid oleate triggered autophagic responses that were indepen- dent of the BECN1/PI3K complex, but that required a functional Golgi system. See