The optogenetic tool ASAP acutely inhibits autophagy.

ASAP optogenetically inhibits autophagy within 5 min of light exposure, and this rapid blockade links nuclear pore complex proteins to tightly regulated autophagy substrate control.

• Why it matters: Autophagy helps cells recycle and maintain quality under stress, but its fast regulation is hard to perturb with conventional methods.
• What they did: The study engineered ASAP using light-induced proteolytic cleavage, then used proteomic profiling to identify tightly regulated autophagy substrates, including nuclear pore complex proteins.
• The result: After rapid autophagy inhibition, incomplete nucleoporin complexes accumulate and cytoplasmic nucleoporin complexes aggregate in processing bodies (P bodies) instead of being degraded, showing nuclear pore complex proteins are regulated autophagy substrates.

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