Beth Levine's Legacy: From the Discovery of BECN1 to Therapies. A Mentees' Perspective

Zhenyi An; Wei-Chung Chiang; Álvaro F Fernández; Luis H Franco; CongCong He; Shu-Yi Huang; Eunmyong Lee; Yang Liu; Salwa Sebti; Sanae Shoji-Kawata; Shyam Sirasanagandla; Richard C Wang; Yongjie Wei; Yuting Zhao; Silvia Vega-Rubin-de-Celis

doi:10.3389/fcell.2022.891332

Beth Levine's Legacy: From the Discovery of BECN1 to Therapies. A Mentees' Perspective

Front Cell Dev Biol. 2022 Jun 27:10:891332. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2022.891332. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, United States.
² Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Life Sciences, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taipei, Taiwan.
³ Departamento de Bioquímica y Biología Molecular, Instituto Universitario de Oncología (IUOPA), Universidad de Oviedo, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria del Principado de Asturias (ISPA), Oviedo, Spain.
⁴ Departamento de Bioquímica e Imunologia, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
⁵ Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States.
⁶ Department of Medical Research, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
⁷ InnoCure Therapeutics Inc., Gyeonggi-do, South Korea.
⁸ Department of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology, McGovern Medical School, University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, TX, United States.
⁹ Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States.
¹⁰ Department of Pharmacy, Nishi Nara Central Hospital, Nara, Japan.
¹¹ St Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, United States.
¹² Department of Dermatology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States.
¹³ Cancer Research Institute, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
¹⁴ Institute of Future Agriculture, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China.
¹⁵ Institute for Cell Biology (Cancer Research), Essen University Hospital, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany.

Abstract

With great sadness, the scientific community received the news of the loss of Beth Levine on 15 June 2020. Dr. Levine was a pioneer in the autophagy field and work in her lab led not only to a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms regulating the pathway, but also its implications in multiple physiological and pathological conditions, including its role in development, host defense, tumorigenesis, aging or metabolism. This review does not aim to provide a comprehensive view of autophagy, but rather an outline of some of the discoveries made by the group of Beth Levine, from the perspective of some of her own mentees, hoping to honor her legacy in science.

Keywords: BECN1; Beth Levine; aging; cancer; infectious diseases; macroautophagy; metabolism; selective autophagy.

Publication types

Review