Quiltophagy--autophagy as folk art.

Over the years macroautophagy (hereafter autophagy) has been depicted artistically through painting, music, dance, videos, and poetry. A unifying idea behind these different aesthetic approaches is that people learn in different ways. Thus, some learners may be engaged by a detailed, but static, painting, whereas others may find insight through the dynamic visualization provided by a dance. While each of these formats has advantages, they also have a common weakness--whether delivered through watercolor on a canvas, words on a paper, or movement captured in a video, they are all 2-dimensional. Yet, some people are tactile learners. In this paper, a quilter describes a project she created with the goal of demonstrating autophagy using a 3-dimensional approach, in which different fiber textures could be used to elaborate certain parts of the process.