Autophagy in Yeast and Electron Microscopy

Abstract

The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy. Autophagy is the major degradative process of the own cytoplasmic components including superfluous or dysfunctional organelles. By a dynamic membrane system, the cargo is delivered to the vacuole/lysosome for degradation. In this commentary, I introduce how the electron microscopy has become to be involved in the early stage of Autophagy research, and what direction has been derived.