Noboru Mizushima and Beth Levine discuss how the loss of function analysis of autophagy genes (Atg) in mice has revealed the many roles of the autophagy pathway in mammalian differentiation and ...

To address this issue, Noda's group in CREST has elucidated that the structure responsible for autophagy is a liquid droplet *1 formed by "liquid-liquid phase separation *2" of the Atg proteins (Fig.