Review Articles in 2018

Lawson et al. review recent advances in single-cell technologies and discuss in detail how they can be leveraged to understand tumour heterogeneity and metastasis.

In this Review, Leidal et al. discuss the role and regulation of autophagy in aging. They cover how autophagy promotes longevity and restricts cellular damage, and discuss autophagy modulators for the potential treatment of age-related diseases.

Goddard et al review recent advances in our understanding of dormant tumour cells, highlight their cross-talk with immune responses, and elaborate therapeutic implications to treat metastatic malignancies.

In this Review, Doherty and Baehrecke discuss the multiple roles of autophagy during cell survival and cell death. They cover the interplay between autophagy, apoptosis and necrosis, as well as engulfment and inflammation.

In this Review, Tavernarakis and colleagues describe recent advances in delineating the molecular mechanisms that mediate mitophagy, and discuss the complex roles of this pathway in physiological and pathological contexts.

Stefano Piccolo and co-authors review recent insights into how YAP and TAZ transcription factors respond to the tissue environment, and how they mediate altered cell behaviour. Feedback mechanisms and crosstalk with other pathways are discussed, as are outstanding questions in the field.

Celia-Terrassa and Kang discuss specialized functions of distinct metastatic niches, and how the emerging knowledge can be leveraged for improved therapeutic opportunities.

Shahbazi et al. review our current understanding of the post-implantation mammalian embryo and how innovative technologies have helped to shape it.

Mitochondria sense and respond to many stressors and can support cell survival or death through energy production and signalling pathways. Mitochondrial responses depend on fusion–fission dynamics that dilute and segregate damaged mitochondria. Mitochondrial motility and inter-organellar interactions, such as with the endoplasmic reticulum, also function in cellular adaptation to stress. In this Review, we discuss how stressors influence these components, and how they contribute to the complex adaptive and pathological responses that lead to disease.

Tumours are often more stiff than normal tissue. In this Review, Mohammadi and Sahai discuss recent insights into how such altered tumour mechanics arise and how this affects tumorigenesis.

Regulation of pluripotency: Li and Belmonte review the pluripotency gene regulatory network, the molecular principles of pluripotency gene function, regulation by RNA-binding proteins and alternative splicing, heterogeneity and alternative pluripotency states.

In this Review Article, Klionsky and co-authors discuss selective autophagy pathways that degrade unwanted cytosolic components and organelles, and how these pathways require ligand receptors and scaffold proteins for cargo specificity.

Autophagy and cancer: In this Review, Galluzzi and colleagues discuss the cellular and molecular mechanisms whereby autophagy functions in multiple aspects of malignant disease, including cancer initiation, progression and responses to therapy.

Mechanical forces influence both cytoplasmic and nuclear events. Kirby and Lammerding discuss recent evidence suggesting that the nucleus itself is a mechanosensor and methods to study nuclear mechanotransduction.