Lysosomal degradation pathways in Drosophila: autophagy, endo/phagocytosis and crinophagy

My group is interested in autophagy and related lysosomal degradation pathways, including endocytosis, phagocytosis and crinophagy. We identified many new regulators of autophagy in Drosophila via genome-wide RNAi screening in starved mosaic larvae, which led us to investigate vesicle fusions as one of the main topics in my lab. My group identified the autophagosomal SNARE Syntaxin 17 and its partners (Takats 2013 JCB), HOPS tethering complex (Takats 2014 MBoC), and small GTPases Rab7 (Hegedus 2016 MBoC) and Rab2 (Lorincz 2017 JCB) as required for autophagosome-lysosome fusion. We also showed that the HOPS-related tethering complex CORVET functions in endosome maturation and phagosome-lysosome fusion, but only in those cell types that have high endocytic activity: larval nephrocytes and blood cells (Lorincz 2016 Elife). More recently, we deciphered the mechanisms of secretory granule-lysosome fusion aka. crinophagy (which takes place in all secretory cells) during the developmentally programmed glue granule production, secretion and degradation process in salivary glands (Csizmadia 2018 JCB).