Stimulating general autophagy by activating nutrient sensors or provoking deacetylation increases the demand for autophagy and preferentially targets damaged or aging cellular components.

“And so, it's another kind of autophagy that then can be specific. Specific for organelles of different types like mitochondria, and it is called mitophagy, or for peroxisomes, and it is called pexophagy, for the endoplasmic reticulum, and it's called reticulophagy, specific for ribosomes, ribophagy. Perfect, yes. And specific for viruses, and it is called virophagy. And the two processes may also interact in a way. So when you stimulate general autophagy by activating the nutrient sensors, AMP kinase, inhibition of mTOR, or by provoking deacetylation, then you increase the demand, and the autophagy machinery actually prefers in a way to sequester and to destroy those organelles that are already slightly marked for destruction. The protein aggregates that are not yet harmful enough to emit a signal per se but they are there. And so it's a sort of preferential cleaning of the slightly damaged and slightly aging portions of the cell.”