Autophagy

Autophagy is the natural, regulated mechanism of the cell that removes unnecessary or disfunctional components. It allows the orderly degradation and recycling of cellular components. Three forms of autophagy are commonly described: macroautophagy, microautophagy, and chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA). In macroautophagy, expendable cytoplasmic constituents are targeted and isolated from the rest of the cell within a double-membraned vesicle known as an autophagosome, which, in time, fuses with an available lysosome, bringing its specialty process of waste management and disposal; and eventually the contents of the vesicle (now called an autolysosome) are degraded and recycled.