Shedding light on mammalian microautophagy.

ESCRT complexes are implicated in mediating membrane protein degradation, whereas hsc70 mediates cytosolic protein degradation via chaperone-mediated autophagy. In this issue of Developmental Cell, Sahu et al. (2011) describe in mammalian cells the involvement of ESCRT complexes and hsc70 in the degradation of cytosolic proteins in a process resembling microautophagy. Copyright Â