The Non-Canonical Roles of the Mammalian ATG8 Family of Ubiquitin-like Proteins

The mammalian ATG8s are a family of proteins normally known for their involvement in a degradative cell process called autophagy. Recently, the ATG8s have been implicated in exciting new functions that were investigated in this work. These included its role in immune pathways and in its attachment to other proteins via a pathway called atg8ylation. It was discovered that the ATG8s play a role in taming immune pathway activation and that they are conjugated to previously unreported proteins, which have wide-ranging implications for cell biology. Overall, this work illuminates some of the non-canonical functions behind this enigmatic family of proteins.