Abstract
Functional characterization of autophagy has only started recently in medically important parasitic protists. It appears both from bioinformatic searches and experimental data that besides a conserved core machinery, the autophagic pathway in these divergent eukaryotic cells might harbor several original features. Moreover, some intracellular parasitic protists are also able to manipulate host cell autophagy in order to establish or maintain infection within a host. Peculiarities of the autophagic functions in these pathogenic protists and, more importantly, the essentiality of these functions for the survival or the pathogenicity of several parasites, suggest that this pathway should be explored to discover new anti-parasitic drug targets.