Self-eating from an ER-associated cup

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.