Delipidation of mammalian Atg8-family proteins by each of the four ATG4 proteases.

During macroautophagy/autophagy, mammalian Atg8-family proteins undergo 2 proteolytic processing events. The first exposes a COOH-terminal glycine used in the conjugation of these proteins to lipids on the phagophore, the precursor to the autophagosome, whereas the second releases the lipid. The ATG4 family of proteases drives both cleavages, but how ATG4 proteins distinguish between soluble and lipid-anchored Atg8 proteins is not well understood. In a fully reconstituted delipidation assay, we establish that the physical anchoring of mammalian Atg8-family proteins in the membrane dramatically shifts the way ATG4 proteases recognize these substrates. Thus, while ATG4B is orders of magnitude faster at processing a soluble unprimed protein, all 4 ATG4 proteases can be activated to similar enzymatic activities on lipid-attached substrates. The recognition of lipidated but not soluble substrates is sensitive to a COOH-terminal LIR motif both in vitro and in cells. We suggest a model whereby ATG4B drives very fast priming of mammalian Atg8 proteins, whereas delipidation is inherently slow and regulated by all ATG4 homologs.