Autophagy promotes mammalian survival by suppressing oxidative stress and p53.

Autophagy captures intracellular components and delivers them to lysosomes for degradation and recycling. Conditional autophagy deficiency in adult mice causes liver damage, shortens life span to 3 mo due to neurodegeneration, and is lethal upon fasting. As autophagy deficiency causes p53 induction and cell death in neurons, we sought to test whether p53 mediates the lethal consequences of autophagy deficiency. Here, we conditionally deleted ( hereafter) and/or the essential autophagy gene throughout adult mice. Compared with mice, the life span of mice was extended due to delayed neurodegeneration and resistance to death upon fasting. also suppressed apoptosis induced by p53 activator Nutlin-3, suggesting that autophagy inhibited p53 activation. To test whether increased oxidative stress in mice was responsible for p53 activation, was deleted in the presence or absence of the master regulator of antioxidant defense nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (). mice died rapidly due to small intestine damage, which was not rescued by codeletion. Thus, limits p53 activation and p53-mediated neurodegeneration. In turn, NRF2 mitigates lethal intestine degeneration upon autophagy loss. These findings illustrate the tissue-specific roles for autophagy and functional dependencies on the p53 and NRF2 stress response mechanisms.