Topic summary
Autophagosomes
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Autophagosome.
Clinical relevance
Autophagosomes serve as essential carriers in the autophagy pathway, enabling cells to adapt to metabolic stress and maintain homeostasis. They are responsible for the selective degradation of damaged organelles (for example, mitophagy (mitochondria), pexophagy (peroxisomes), aggrephagy (protein aggregates), glycophagy (glycogens), lipophagy (lipids), ribophagy (ribosome), xenophagy (pathogens), and ER-phagy).