From the urea cycle to autophagy: Alfred J. Meijer.

Now that many of the components of the autophagy machinery have been identified, in particular the autophagy-related (Atg) proteins, increasing focus is being directed toward the role of autophagy in health and disease. Accordingly, it is of ever-greater importance to understand the central role of autophagy in cellular metabolism, a point with which many people will likely agree. However, in our rush to understand autophagy's function in metabolism, we tend to overlook the role of metabolism in regulating autophagy, even though substantial work has been done on this topic. One of the pioneers in this area is Alfred "Fred" J. Meijer.