Date Approved

2022

Degree Type

Open Access Senior Honors Thesis

Department or School

Chemistry

First Advisor

Dr. Steven Backues, PhD

Second Advisor

Dr. Hedeel Evans, PhD

Third Advisor

Dr. Deborah Heyl-Clegg, PhD

Abstract

Autophagy is the cellular degradation process in which cellular contents are encapsulated by double-membrane vesicles, autophagosomes, and delivered to the vacuole to be degraded and recycled. This process is important for cell health and homeostasis. There are approximately 32 different autophagy-related proteins involved. Atg10 is an enzyme that may affect overall autophagic activity by changing autophagosome size and/or number. Our goal is to find mutants that cause a significant, partial loss in Atg10’s activity by mutating some residues near the active site and testing the functionality of these mutants by performing western blots and enzymatic assays. Here we show that the Atg10 mutants H131A and Y73Q retain autophagic activity with no significant loss in the function of Atg10.

Included in

Chemistry Commons

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