autophagic vacuole

The number of autophagic vacuoles and lysosomal structures often increase during central chromatolysis.

It may serve to accumulate cellular debris or act as an autophagic vacuole in which non-functional organelles are digested and their components recycled.

Lysosomes fuse with autophagic vacuoles and dispense their enzymes into the autophagic vacuoles, digesting their contents.

Interestingly, Rab24 has been implicated as a possible mediator of autophagy in a recent study where wild-type GFP-Rab24 was observed to accumulate on large autophagic vacuoles in cells subjected to amino acid starvation [ 43 ] .