Autophagy

The term autophagy refers to the group of intracellular pathways that mediate delivery of cytosolic components to lysosomes for their degradation. Several types of vesicular compartments and dedicated molecular machinery that organize into dynamic protein complexes mediate each of the different steps of the autophagic process: activation, cargo recognition, cargo delivery to lysosomes, degradation, and recycling of essential constituents. Proper autophagic function is essential for the maintenance of the cellular energetic balance and for cellular quality control. The growing number of human diseases linked with autophagy malfunctioning supports the recent interest in modulating different autophagic steps with therapeutic purposes.