(Tokyo Institute of Technology) Postdoctoral Researcher Tetsuya Kotani, Associate Professor Hitoshi Nakatogawa, Honorary Professor Yoshinori Ohsumi and colleagues at Tokyo Tech have analyzed the Atg protein Atg2, whose function had been completely unknown, and have discovered that Atg2 tethers the pre-autophagosomal membrane to the endoplasmic reticulum during autophagosome formation.