Due to copyright issues, an electronic copy of the thesis must be ordered from the faculty. For the faculty to have time to process the order, the order must be received by the faculty at the latest 2 days before the public defence. Orders received later than 2 days before the defence will not be processed. After the public defence, please address any inquiries regarding the thesis to the candidate.
Trial Lecture – time and place
See Trial Lecture.
Adjudication committee
- First opponent: Professor Michael Lazarou, Monash University, Australia
- Second opponent: Professor Margrét Helga Ögmundsdóttir, University of Iceland,
- Third member and chair of the evaluation committee: Professor Lars Eide, University of Oslo
Chair of the Defence
Professor Bjørn Steen Skålhegg, University of Oslo
Principal Supervisor
Professor II Anne Simonsen, University of Oslo
Summary
Autophagy is the eukaryotic cell’s renovation and degradation system and is essential for cellular homeostasis. In brief, this process is regulated by a core autophagy machinery that promotes the biogenesis of a double-membraned vesicle that isolates cellular content destined for degradation in the lysosome. The selective autophagy of mitochondria, known as mitophagy, involves specific mitochondrial determinants that interact with the core autophagy machinery for efficient mitochondrial degradation.
The major aims of this thesis were to characterise the molecular mechanisms of hypoxia-induced mitophagy, with a specific focus on how discrete mitochondrial subdomains may be differentially targeted to this pathway. Furthermore, an aim was to identify novel mitophagy regulators and characterise the role of autophagy and mitophagy regulators in a cancer setting.
In conclusion, the work done across the three articles in this thesis demonstrated the fascinating diversity of autophagy molecular mechanisms. The two first articles included comprehensive high-throughput analyses on original datasets and identified novel mitophagy regulators in hypoxia. Further cell biological characterisations illustrated that there are differential mechanisms and paths of hypoxia-induced mitophagy. The third article characterised an autophagy regulator in cancer conditions and demonstrated its importance in cancer development via interactions to non-autophagy pathways. Overall, this work contributes to the unravelling of autophagy molecular mechanisms and may be important in further developing a fundamental understanding of cellular health and disease.
Additional information
Contact the research support staff.