In 2016 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy. This has been the highest accolade to this field, which started developing 50 years ago when De Duve coined the termed autophagy.1 Since the early birth of this field, autophagy has been linked intimately to liver metabolism. Autophagy is an essential recycling mechanism that ensures an equilibrium between synthesis and degradation of intracellular components. During the 50 years since its first description, autophagy has been shown to be involved in a multitude of cellular processes and degrade very diverse cellular components ranging from organelles, proteins, or glycogen to lipids.
