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♻️ Autophagy and the Lysosomal Degradation Pathway

See how starvation signals shut down mTOR and trigger autophagosomes to engulf damaged organelles, which then fuse with lysosomes to recycle cellular material.

Medicine & Biophysics3DModerate60 FPS

The simulation shows how falling mTOR activity under starvation conditions activates the ULK1 complex, driving phagophore membrane growth around damaged cargo and its subsequent fusion with a lysosome to complete degradation.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

🎮 How to Use

Use the starvation signal slider to lower mTOR activity and watch autophagosome formation accelerate, then follow an individual vesicle as it engulfs cargo and fuses with a lysosome in the rotatable 3D scene.

💡 Did You Know?

Yoshinori Ohsumi won the 2016 Nobel Prize for identifying most of the core autophagy genes using simple baker's yeast, machinery later found to be conserved almost unchanged in human cells.

⚙ Under the hood

See how starvation signals shut down mTOR and trigger autophagosomes to engulf damaged organelles, which then fuse with lysosomes to recycle cellular material.

autophagylysosomemtorcell biologyorganelle recyclingstarvation responseautophagosomecellular homeostasis

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install