Abstract
Autophagy is a bulk degradation system induced by cellular stresses such as nutrient starvation. Its function relies on the formation of double-membrane vesicles called autophagosomes. Unlike other organelles that appear to stably exist in the cell, autophagosomes are formed on demand, and once their formation is initiated, it proceeds surprisingly rapidly. How and where this dynamic autophagosome formation takes place has been a long-standing question, but the discovery of Atg proteins in the 1990's significantly accelerated our understanding of autophagosome biogenesis. In this review, we will briefly introduce each Atg functional unit in relation to autophagosome biogenesis, and then discuss the origin of the autophagosomal membrane with an introduction to selected recent studies addressing this problem.
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Acknowledgements
We thank our lab member Marija Landekic for discussion and English proofreading. Work in the authors' lab is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan and by Japan Science and Technology Agency CREST.
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Shibutani, S., Yoshimori, T. A current perspective of autophagosome biogenesis. Cell Res 24, 58–68 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/cr.2013.159
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/cr.2013.159
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