The core molecular machinery of autophagosome formation

Abstract

Autophagy is a conserved cytoplasmic process from yeast to mammals, by which cells degrade and recycle their intracellular components. During macroautophagy, a unique compartment, named the autophagosome, is formed to engulf the cargos and send them to the vacuole or lysosome. Whether the cargos are nonspecifically sequestered, as occurs in most types of macroautophagy, or specifically selected, such as in the cytoplasm-to-vacuole targeting pathway or selective mitochondria degradation, a common set of molecular machinery is required for the formation of the autophagosome. In this chapter, we summarize our knowledge about the roles and regulation of these core machinery components in autophagosome formation, in both yeast and mammalian systems.