{"id":221655,"date":"2025-09-10T03:43:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T08:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/newly-discovered-cell-machinery-breaks-down-protein-aggregates-into-smaller-pieces-before-taking-it-to-the-trash"},"modified":"2025-09-10T03:43:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T08:43:22","slug":"newly-discovered-cell-machinery-breaks-down-protein-aggregates-into-smaller-pieces-before-taking-it-to-the-trash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/newly-discovered-cell-machinery-breaks-down-protein-aggregates-into-smaller-pieces-before-taking-it-to-the-trash","title":{"rendered":"Newly discovered cell machinery breaks down protein aggregates into smaller pieces before \u2018taking it to the trash\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/newly-discovered-cell-machinery-breaks-down-protein-aggregates-into-smaller-pieces-before-taking-it-to-the-trash.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A new study from Aarhus University shows that our cells\u2019 ability to clean out old protein clumps, known as aggregates, also includes a\u2014up till now unknown\u2014partnership with an engine that breaks down bigger pieces into smaller before \u201ctaking it to the trash.\u201d An important find for future treatments of diseases like Alzheimer\u2019s, Parkinson\u2019s, ALS and Huntington\u2019s, which are all characterized by the accumulation of protein in the brain.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine you\u2019re about to eat a big pizza. In order to not choke on it, you cut it up into slices and eat it bite by bite. And while you\u2019re chomping down on your slices, cells inside your body are busy slicing the built-up protein clumps into pieces that are more manageable for the body\u2019s trash system\u2014otherwise it would clog up and malfunction.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers from the department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University have just released a new study, which for the first time documents exactly how those clumps of unwanted protein get reduced to smaller pieces before being disposed of by the cells\u2019 garbage disposal system\u2014called autophagy. The work is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41556-025-01747-1\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Nature Cell Biology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new study from Aarhus University shows that our cells\u2019 ability to clean out old protein clumps, known as aggregates, also includes a\u2014up till now unknown\u2014partnership with an engine that breaks down bigger pieces into smaller before \u201ctaking it to the trash.\u201d An important find for future treatments of diseases like Alzheimer\u2019s, Parkinson\u2019s, ALS and [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}