Emerging roles of autophagy in metabolism and metabolic disorders.

The global prevalence of metabolic disorders is an immediate threat to human health. Genetic features, environmental aspects and lifestyle changes are the major risk factors determining metabolic dysfunction in the body. Autophagy is a housekeeping stress-induced lysosomal degradation pathway, which recycles macromolecules and metabolites for new protein synthesis and energy production and regulates cellular homeostasis by clearance of damaged protein or organelles. Recently, a dramatically increasing number of literatures has shown that defects of the autophagic machinery is associated with dysfunction of multiple metabolic tissues including pancreatic β cells, liver, adipose tissue and muscle, and is implicated in metabolic disorders such as obesity and insulin resistance. Here in this review, we summarize the representative works on these topics and discuss the versatile roles of autophagy in the regulation of cellular metabolism and its possible implication in metabolic diseases.