UNM scientists have discovered a protein that organizes autophagy in the human immune system, “the vital internal cell-scrubbing process that maintains the intracellular landscape by gathering and disposing of worn-out proteins and invading microorganisms,” according to UNM press release.
Autophagy is the early immune response that regulates which cells die or live longer.
“UNM Professor and Chair of the Molecular Genetics and Microbiology Department Vojo Deretic, Ph.D., and colleagues are able to provoke an early immune response through autophagy in the human body via the ‘immunity-related GTPase family M’ protein, or IRGM, a distinctly human gene where mutations causing inflammatory diseases often occur. IRGM plays a direct role in organizing autophagy’s antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory functions in Crohn’s disease and other inflammation-related illnesses,” according to the statement.
The new findings explain the molecular processes that use the human body’s immune system to prevent infectious diseases, according to the statement.
“We expected a more indirect mechanism and process that assembled this core autophagy machinery,” the statement quoted Deretic. “But now we know that the IRGM autophagy regulator is the very centerpiece of the early immune response process in humans. Without it, we all would suffer some form of inflammatory disease.”
