Abstract
Autophagy is an intracellular bulk degradation system conserved from yeast to human. Assembly of the pre-autophagosomal structure (PAS) is one of the most important events in starvation-induced autophagy. Recently, the structures of the autophagy initiating Atg1 complex that constitutes the PAS core have been solved by X-ray crystallography. In this review, we summarize current knowledge regarding the structure and the molecular mechanism of starvation-induced assembly of the Atg1 complex and propose the current model of autophagy initiation.
