ABSTRACT
T he discovery of the occurrence of autophagy in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and the subsequent isolation of autophagy defective mutants provided the first opportunity to understand the details of the molecular mechanism involved in this process. In this chapter, we provide a brief history of the study of autophagy using yeast cells. Following an overview of the entire autophagy process, the detailed molecular nature of each of the charac terized Apg/Aut/Cvt proteins that are involved in autophagy is depicted. The unusual features of these proteins highlight the uniqueness of the autophagic process among the entire range of intracellular membrane dynamics.
