Nuclear waste (the kind we eukaryotes all make) get lumped into a garbage can that then gets fused to a cytoplasmic trash truck/digester called a vacuole or lysosome.

There is a lot of excitement in lysosomal processing if protein and polyglucosan aggregates in aging brain (work of Ralph Nixon). But still a very long haul for this work in yeast to applications, if any, in humans. Bravo anyway—after all, yeast are family.

“Tying that particular family of proteins and this aspect of vesicle traffic biology to protein clearance gives us a new way to look at Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s – all these neurodegenerative diseases,” said Sontag.