Autophagy mitigates ethanol-induced mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress in esophageal keratinocytes

The current study is focused on elucidating the effect of acute alcohol challenge on esophageal epithelial cells. We employed in vivo mouse models, ex-vivo 3D-organoids and 2D cell culture to answer this question. RNA-Seq was employed to identify acute alcohol-induced transcriptional changes in human esophageal epithelial cells in-vitro. Acute-alcohol promoted strong mitochondrial damage resulting in bioenergenitic imbalance in esophageal epithelial cells. Autophagy was activated potentially via the AMPK-mTORC1 pathway to promtoe the clearance of damaged mitochondria. Transcriptional analysis of 3 independent human esophageal epithelial cells lines exposed to 0% and 2% alcohol (ethanol)