The research goal of our team is to understand how mammalian cells organelles cooperate with autophagic machinery to respond to stress stimuli.

Most of the mammalian intracellular compartments are highly regulated and renewed to ensure that complex trafficking and sorting functions occur properly and maintain normal cell physiology. In this dynamic context, the intracellular degradative autophagy pathway probably takes advantage of – and initiates dialogs with – pre-existing signaling platforms, organelles and endomembranes. Although there is low-level basal activity, autophagy is mostly associated with stress responses and is considered as an acute protective system that ensures cell homeostasis and contributes directly to cell metabolism and energy regulation. Accordingly, autophagy participates in development, and immunity and protects against cell modifications related to ageing. Autophagy involves the formation, and subsequent trafficking, of autophagosomes, which arise from the closure of a transient cup-shaped double-membrane structure termed phagophore that captures cytoplasmic cargos for a final delivery to lysosomes. Studying the crosstalk of autophagic machinery with other cellular organelles and structures, such as mitochondria, endosomes, and primary cilia, will shed light on the importance of endomembranes and signaling platforms cooperation in stress sensing and homeostasis regulation in a wide variety of mammalian cells.