Self-eating from an ER-associated cup

Abstract

Since the first morphological description of autophagosomes in the early 1960s, two critical questions have been a matter of intense investigation and debate: what is the origin of the autophagosomal membrane and how is it formed? A study by Axe et al. (E.L. Axe, S.A. Walker, M. Manifava, P. Chandra, H.L. Roderick, A. Habermann, G. Griffiths, and N.T. Ktistakis. 2008. J. Cell Biol. 182:685-701) provides evidence that cup-shaped protrusions from the endoplasmic reticulum, named omegasomes, serve as platforms for autophagosome biogenesis in mammalian cells.