Mechanisms of neuronal survival safeguarded by endocytosis and autophagy

Abstract Multiple aspects of neuronal physiology crucially depend on two cellular pathways, autophagy and endocytosis. During endocytosis, extracellular components either unbound or recognized by membrane‐localized receptors (termed “cargo”) become internalized into plasma membrane‐derived vesicles. These can serve to either recycle the material back to the plasma membrane or send it for degradation to lysosomes. Autophagy also uses lysosomes as a terminal degradation point, although instead of degrading the plasma membrane‐derived cargo, autophagy eliminates detrimental cytosolic material and intracellular organelles, which are transported to lysosomes by means of double‐membrane vesicles, referred to as autophagosomes. Neurons, like all non‐neuronal cells, capitalize on autophagy and endocytosis to communicate with the environment and maintain protein and organelle homeostasis. Additionally, the highly polarized, post‐mitotic nature of neurons made them adopt these two pathways for cell‐specific functions. These include the maintenance of the synaptic vesicle pool in the pre‐synaptic terminal and the long‐distance transport of signaling molecules. Originally discovered independently from each other, it is now clear that autophagy and endocytosis are closely interconnected and share several common participating molecules. Considering the crucial role of autophagy and endocytosis in cell type‐specific functions in neurons, it is not surprising that defects in both pathways have been linked to the pathology of numerous neurodegenerative diseases. In this review, we highlight the recent knowledge of the role of endocytosis and autophagy in neurons with a special focus on synaptic physiology and discuss how impairments in genes coding for autophagy and endocytosis proteins can cause neurodegeneration.