Research
Hormonal
Ulk1 is required for the targeting of mitochondria to lysosomes during exercise-induced mitophagy, but is not required for lysosomal biogenesis itself.
Ulk1 acts as a specific tagger that directs damaged mitochondria to lysosomes for destruction. Without Ulk1, the cell may still produce more lysosomes, but it fails to effectively target and degrade the damaged mitochondria.
GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
These findings indicate that Ulk1 is not required for lysosomal biogenesis... strongly demonstrate that Ulk1 is required for exercise-induced mitophagy and has an important role in targeting the lysosome to mitochondria selected for degradation.
Why this rating
Evidence from Ulk1 knockout (MKO) mice clearly separates biogenesis from targeting.
Source
Ampk phosphorylation of Ulk1 is required for targeting of mitochondria to lysosomes in exercise-induced mitophagy
Rhianna C. Laker et al. · Nature Communications · 2017
DOI 10.1038/s41467-017-00520-9
mechanism_onlyCited 505×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Acute exercise induces mitophagy in skeletal muscle via an AMPK-dependent phosphorylation of Ulk1 at Serine 555, which is required for targeting damaged mitochondria to lysosomes.Good
- AMPK is required for exercise-induced mitophagy, as blocking AMPK activity abolishes the increase in mitophagic markers (pure red puncta) following exercise.Good
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