Autophagy: clocking in for the night shift

Abstract

Daily rhythms of biological activity, such as cycles of sleep–wake and feeding–fasting, are coupled to cell‐autonomous circadian clocks to synchronize organismal food intake with cellular bioenergetics. Food intake during wake stimulates biosynthesis followed by rest periods of autophagy, which degrades damaged macromolecules and recycles them as nutrients to enhance fitness. In this issue of The EMBO Journal, Pastore et al discovered that regulators of autophagy, TFEB and TFE3, are activated during the rest phase and ultimately drive the expression of Rev‐erbα, a component of the core circadian molecular clock, coupling autophagy and the clock.