First discovery of a novel autophagy regulator using a single cell genome technique

[이데일리 이순용 기자] In the process of treating diabetes, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases, a new factor was discovered for the first time in the world that regulates a system called ‘autophagy’, which is essential to maintain cellular homeostasis in our body.

Professor Dong-Ha Kim’s team from the Department of Anatomy of the Catholic University of Korea announced on the 21st that they had recently verified the function of ‘C/EBPγ’, a new autophagy regulator, for the first time in the world using a single-cell genome analysis.

Considering that the process of regulating autophagy and discovering new regulators has been a very important task in overcoming related diseases, the research results of Professor Dong-ha Kim’s team are based on various diseases that can occur due to problems with the function of autophagy It is expected that it increased the possibility of developing drug candidates for treatment.

Autophagy is an intracellular breakdown and recycling system that removes unnecessary proteins or damaged organelles to maintain cellular homeostasis. Therefore, in order to maintain a certain level of autophagy, the corresponding gene must be activated to make an autophagy protein, and the amount of the protein must be maintained sufficiently in the cell.

However, problems with this system are known to cause serious diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases.

The research of Professor Dongha Kim’s team in this study is that C/EBPγ is an autophagy regulator that works specifically according to an unknown type of nutrient deficiency, and among various signs of autophagy induction, it specifically responds to deficiency amino acid. activate

In particular, the autophagy modulator using the C/EBPγ mechanism, which acts specifically in the amino acid deficiency identified in this study, is used in the development of therapeutic agents for various metabolic diseases, degenerative brain diseases, cancer and cardiovascular diseases caused by autophagy dysfunction is expected to be usefully used by targeting the regulation of amino acids.

Professor Dong-Ha Kim said, “I am very surprised and pleased to have successfully completed the first study to predict and validate new autophagy regulators using single-cell genome analysis. We want to lay the groundwork for the development of therapeutic agents for refractory diseases through faster and more accurate validation of factors.”

This study was published in ‘Nucleic Acids Research’, a world-renowned scientific journal, with the title ‘Study on the function of the amino acid-deficient autophagy regulator C/EBPγ using single-cell transcriptome analysis.