Li Yu
Cell biologist at Tsinghua University who, as a postdoc at the NIH, found how cells end autophagy and rebuild their lysosomes, and whose own group later discovered the migrasome, a new organelle left behind by migrating cells
Professor, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University (since 2008) · postdoc, Michael Lenardo lab, Laboratory of Immunology, NIAID, National Institutes of Health · PhD, Peking University
Li Yu Lab, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) ↗
Autophagy is the cell's recycling system. During starvation the cell wraps parts of itself in membranes, delivers them to lysosomes (small acid-filled sacs full of digestive enzymes) and breaks them down for raw material. mTOR, the cell's growth controller, is switched off at the start of this process. Li Yu's 2010 Nature paper (YUX2010), done in rat kidney cells in Michael Lenardo's lab at the NIH, asked what happens next. During long starvation, the breakdown products switched mTOR back on. That renewed mTOR activity stopped autophagy and started a repair step the team called autophagic lysosome reformation: new lysosomes budded off from the used autolysosomes, so the cell got its digestive sacs back. The paper reported the same process in several other animal species.
The finding matters because it shows mTOR acting at both ends of autophagy. It is not only the switch that blocks autophagy when food is plentiful. It is also part of the signal that ends autophagy and restores the lysosome pool, which is why a drug that blocks mTOR for a long time can interfere with this recovery step.
Li Yu earned a PhD at Peking University and trained as a postdoc with Lenardo before joining the School of Life Sciences at Tsinghua University in 2008. His group kept working on later steps of autophagy, and in the early 2010s it discovered migrasomes, small vesicle-like structures that form on thin fibres at the back of a moving cell and are left behind when the fibres break. The lab now studies how migrasomes form and what they carry, including their role in delivering signalling molecules during zebrafish organ development.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | M | Termination of autophagy and reformation of lysosomes regulated by mTOR YUX2010 First author: showed in rat kidney cells that mTOR is reactivated during prolonged starvation and that this ends autophagy and drives lysosome reformation. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Li Yu.
ShowHide
- Michael J. Lenardo Immunologist known for work on how immune cells die and are controlled; his lab also showed that mTOR reactivation ends autophagy and rebuilds lysosomes.
Every researcher with a profile →
Thank you. That helps us know which pages have been read by someone who knows the work.
Thank you. We will check it and correct the page.
Thank you. Your answer was counted anonymously.