Abstract: Autophagy is a process of cellular degradation for the removal of damaged components and eventual recycling of the resulting molecules that help to the maintenance of cellular homeostasis. Through this pathway, proteins with relatively long half-life and whole organelles (e.g., mitochondria, peroxisomes, and ribosomes) are degraded in the cytoplasm for the continuous turnover of cellular structures to facilitate their renewal. However, the beneficial effect of autophagy goes beyond cellular “cleaning” and resides to a large extent on its ability to recycle cell components back into the cytosol. Thus, autophagy is a fundamental mechanism to regulate cellular functions, including DNA repair, proliferation, differentiation, embryonic development, and the immune response.