The discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy and its function. Jingdong Wu Grade 12 Lakefield College School SLAP Cancer Research Program October 10, 2023

Jing Dong Wu paper Oct 10,2023.pdfSummary It has been over 50 years since autophagy was found. However, not until 2016 did Yoshinori Ohsumi let the public recognize the importance of this behaviour.  Autophagy is a process that keeps your cells in proper balance. It will take away old or damaged components of the cell and recycle them. Those components will turn into amino acids which can be used as fuel or a new part of the protein. It can be triggered due to exercise, calorie restriction, fasting, or keto diet. Even though scientists are still trying to use autophagy to treat diseases such as cancer, there’s no evidence that autophagy will be able to do that with diet or exercise. Exercising or keeping a good diet might be helpful to us, but we can’t expect it to prevent diseases because of autophagy.