The maintenance of protein homeostasis – a balance between synthesis, folding and controlled degradation of proteins – is of pivotal importance for all cellular functions. Misfolded, damaged, dysfunctional or aggregated proteins basically can be degraded via two different mechanisms: the ubiquitin proteasome system and macroautophagy which encompasses the disassembly of cytoplasmic macromolecules or organelles by means of the lysosomal system. In the course of macroautophagy degradation-prone material is packed into membrane vesicles, so called autophagosomes that are subsequently directed to and fused with lysosomes.