autophagyn.
/ɔːˈtɒfədʒi/, U.S. /ɔˈtɑfədʒi/, /ɑˈtɑfədʒi/ 1. The action of feeding upon oneself; spec. metabolic consumption of the body's own tissue, as in starvation or certain diseases.
ΚΠ
1860 Cleveland Med. Gaz. 1 May 342 An apparently still more revolting proposition has been made to the French Academy under the name of ‘artificial autophagy’.
1862 Amer. Jrnl. Med. Sci. 44 220 M. Trousseau already pointed the striking analogy existing between the more serious symptoms of typhoid and those of autophagy consequent on protracted abstinence.
1893 Ann. Bot. 7 282 The starved leaves, the cells of which are going through a process of autophagy, contain very much more diastase than do those which have been carrying on their metabolic processes.
1900 E. Kleen On Diabetes Mellitus & Glycosuria 72 I give, therefore, no separate description of mild and severe diabetes, but only point out the toxic and cachectic nature, and the autophagy of the latter.
1967 Ecol. Monogr. 37 84/1 The presence of a regenerated portion of the tail might possibly indicate either aggression by a predator, or autophagy.
1984 Times 28 Sept. 12/7 Erisichthon became so ravenous that he was driven to autophagy, and fed himself by chomping his own body.
2006 G. Lewbart Invertebr. Med. 86/2 An entity sometimes encountered in octopuses is autophagy (‘self-eating’) of the arms and is a well-known form of self-mutilation or self-destruction.
2. Chiefly Cell Biology. Autolysis of cells; the breaking down or consumption of cellular constituents; spec. the enclosure of a portion of cytoplasm within a vacuole, leading to lysosomal digestion of the contents.
ΚΠ
1924 Jrnl. Infectious Dis. 34 317 Bordet thinks this lytic phenomenon, instead of being due to the agency of an invisible parasite, is in reality an autolysis, a process of autophagy.
1937 Science 16 Apr. 385/2 The reserve nature of these bodies [sc. granules in the cells of Azotobacter chroococcum] was further demonstrated..by a study of their autophagy.
1963 C. de Duve in A. V. S. de Reuck & M. P. Cameron Lysosomes 26 It is not known how these vacuoles arise, but the process recalls phagocytosis in its consequences and appears to involve some kind of engulfing phenomenon. It is accordingly proposed to refer to it as intracellular autophagy.
1985 C. R. Leeson et al. Textbk. Histol. (ed. 5) i. 37/1 A similar process that involves segregation of a cell's own components..to form a vacuole is termed autophagy, and the resulting vacuole is an autosome or autophagosome.
2006 Guardian 18 Apr. i. 5/5 Ginger seems to offer a two-pronged attack on cancer cells: it makes them commit suicide, known as apoptosis, and self-digest, known as autophagy.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2011; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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