Key autophagy protein. Essential for autophagosome biogenesis, particularly elongation and closure. Required for cargo/substrate selection in some forms of selective autophagy.
Recombinant human GABARAP protein expressed with a N-terminal GST-tag. Utility in GABARAP binding studies and antibody characterisation
Background:
Autophagy involves concerted action of more than 20 specific autophagy (ATG) proteins that mediate the formation of a double-membrane vesicle, the autophagosome, which engulfs its substrates and delivers them to the lysosome for degradation. In many cases control of substrate selectivity is mediated by ubiquitin modification.
The autophagy pathway in mammalian cells is negatively regulated by mammalian target of rapamycin (mTor), inactivation of which leads to initiation of phagophore assembly. Formation and expansion of the pre-autophagosomal structure in yeast requires the attachment of the ubiquitin-like protein ATG8 via its C-terminal glycine to the amino group of phosphatidylethanolamine (PE), enabling its anchoring to the isolation membrane of the autophagosome. In mammals, Atg8 is represented by at least six orthologs that fall into two subgroups, LC3- and GABARAP-like proteins and the free and PE linked versions of these proteins are often referred to as LC3-I and LC3-II respectively.
