Figure 4.

Autophagy mechanism and associated gene dysfunctions. Autophagy is a cellular mechanism by which metabolites, organelles, proteins and protein aggregates are enveloped by a vesicular membrane to form an autophagosome. This autophagosome is trafficked to a lysosome where fusion occurs, and lysosomal degradative enzymes break down the cargo. Dysfunction in several genes associated with neurodegenerative diseases has been implicated and are known to disrupt autophagy. The schematic image (Figure 4) was created using BioRender.com.