Figure 1.

There are three types of autophagy in cells of mammals. In macroautophagy, double-membrane vesicles and autophagsosomes are created de novo in order to pack and transfer cell debris to the lysosome. In chaperone-mediated autophagy, misfolded proteins are carried individually across the lysosomal membrane. In microautophagy, cell detritus is taken up directly following the invagination of the lysosomal membrane. What all three autophagy modes have in common, is the complete breakdown of cell cargo and the secretion of degradation end products back into the cytosol for reuse. Figure adapted with kind permission from Parzych et al. [12].