Tat-Beclin 1 Products

Many standard methods to induce autophagy lack desired specificity. Both starvation and rapamycin, an allosteric inhibitor of MTORC1, are known to regulate biological processes other than autophagy. The non-specific nature of these methods complicates data interpretation and has driven the preference for loss-of-function Atg mutants to analyze autophagy. In 2013, the discovery of engineered Tat-Beclin 1 provided the first method to induce autophagy without regulating other pathways non-specifically. Peptides composed of the autophagy-inducing region of Beclin 1 fused to the HIV-Tat protein were demonstrated to increase autophagosome and autolysosome numbers, as well as protein degradation. Since then, Tat-Beclin 1 peptides have been widely used to successfully induce autophagy both in vitro and in vivo. The peptides below are of a shorter Tat-Beclin 1 peptide with an enhanced potency to induce autophagy. This shorter peptide, Tat-D11, increases autophagosome and autolysosome induction by over fivefold compared to the longer peptide, Tat-Beclin 1. Results have demonstrated the superior potency of Tat-D11 over Tat-Beclin 1.