Autophagy

Illustrations describing the autophagy process with various levels of detail (use arrows to navigate).

Autophagy is a cellular recycling process, where a cell degrades old and damaged cellular component that are reused to provide energy for the cell. Depicted here is the process of autophagy, involving entrapment of the cellular components within double membranous vesicles (autophagosomes) that eventually fuse with lysosomes to form autolysosomes, where the content gets degraded by hydrolytic enzymes. The last figure highlights proteins that form the core autophagic machinery that initiates the process.