During autophagy initiation, the curved phagophore is stabilized. Using in vitro reconstitution and MD simulations, authors show that WIPI2 and ATG16L1 bind these curved phagophores and the ATG12-5-16L1 complex is responsible for membrane curvature.
The authors showed through structural determination how ATG16L1 and WIPI2 interact and compared the other WIPI proteins showing the variety of mechanisms of membrane recruitment by WIPI proteins.
