Autophagy as a trigger for cell death: Autophagic degradation of inhibitor of apoptosis dBruce controls DNA fragmentation during late oogenesis in Drosophila

Abstract

Autophagy has been reported to contribute to cell death, but the underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown and controversial. We have been studying oogenesis in Drosophila melanogaster as a model system to understand the interplay between autophagy and cell death. Using a novel autophagy reporter we found that autophagy occurs during developmental cell death of nurse cells in late oogenesis. Genetic inhibition of autophagy-related genes atg1, atg13 and vps34 results in late-stage egg chambers containing persisting nurse cell nuclei without fragmented DNA and attenuation of caspase-3 cleavage. We found that Drosophila inhibitor of apoptosis dBruce is degraded by autophagy and this degradation promotes DNA fragmentation and subsequent nurse cell death. These studies demonstrate that autophagic degradation of an inhibitor of apoptosis is a novel mechanism of triggering cell death.