Guest Editors
Shiping Zhang
Shanghai Tech University, School of Life Science and Technology
Shiping Zhang is working as a Research Assistant Professor at the School of Life Science and Technology at Shanghai Tech University. She obtained her PhD from Tongji University in 2015 and conducted her postdoctoral research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Currently, her work focuses on the regulatory role of autophagy in neurodegenerative diseases. Using Drosophila and mouse models, she identified the Parkinson’s disease (PD) risk factor, the Cyclin-G-Associated kinase/dAuxilin, as a new regulator of autophagy initiation in glia, dysregulation of which contributes to PD-like symptoms. Through her studies, she aims to elucidate the molecular mechanism of autophagy in protein aggregate degradation and neurodegeneration.
Shuanglong Yi
Wannan Medical College, Cell Electrophysiology Laboratory
Shuanglong Yi is working as a Lecturer at the Cell Electrophysiology Laboratory at Wannan Medical College. He obtained his PhD from Shanghai Tech University in 2024. His recent research focuses on elucidating the mechanical intricacies of glial cell autophagy regulation in Parkinson's disease. Through the modulation of Drosophila glial cells and cell lines, he discovered that the autophagy-related gene Atg9 plays a role in regulating the onset of Parkinson's disease by impacting the autophagic process. Furthermore, he revealed that the Parkinson's disease-associated risk gene Cyclin-G-Associated kinase/dAuxilin contributes to the occurrence of Parkinson's disease by influencing the autophagic process in glial cells.
Linfang Wang
Shanghai Tech University, School of Life Science and Technology
Linfang Wang is pursuing her PhD degree in the School of Life Science and Technology at ShanghaiTech University. She obtained her master's degree from the School of Medicine, Jiangnan University, and then worked as a Research Assistant at Tongji University for 2 years. Her research focuses on neurodegenerative disease. During her master's degree, she explored the mechanism of neuron regeneration in spinal cord-injured zebrafish and found that neuropeptide Y and Activating Transcription Factor 3 are essential for the recovery of zebrafish motor function. Then, she worked on the mechanism of glial cells in modulating Parkinson’s Disease (PD) using Drosophila and mouse models. During her PhD, she found leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) and Cyclin-G-Associated kinase/dAuxilin as crucial regulators of the glial auto-lysosome pathway underlying PD progression.
Collection Overview
Autophagy is a fundamental cellular process responsible for the degradation and recycling of proteins, organelles, pathogens, and other intracellular components, playing critical roles in development, metabolism, immunity, neurobiology, aging, cancer, and numerous human diseases. As interest in autophagy continues to expand across diverse biological and biomedical disciplines, there is an increasing demand for robust, reproducible, and innovative methodologies that enable accurate investigation of autophagic pathways, dynamics, regulation, and function in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo.
Despite significant advances, the study of autophagy remains technically challenging. Accurate measurement of autophagic flux, differentiation between autophagy subtypes, standardization of experimental workflows, interpretation of imaging and omics datasets, and integration of multi-scale analyses continue to present obstacles for researchers. Furthermore, emerging fields such as selective autophagy, organelle-specific autophagy, autophagy-related signaling networks, and therapeutic modulation require increasingly sophisticated experimental approaches and analytical tools.
This Topical Collection aims to serve as a comprehensive resource highlighting established and emerging methods used to study autophagy. By bringing together detailed, visualized protocols spanning multiple experimental platforms and biological systems, this collection will promote methodological rigor, reproducibility, and cross-disciplinary collaboration.
