Does anyone know what Autophage means?

Question

I looked into dictionnaries, I searched in the internet but I could not find any answers.
Help me plz.

Answer 1

Auto- is a prefix for self, as in autobiography, autograph, etc.

-phage is a suffix for "eats" or "to eat"; a bacteriophage for example is a virus that infects ("eats") bacteria.

So based on that, it would appear that an autophage would eat, or digest, itself. This article from Wikipedia on autophagy says that autophagy is synonymous with "self-cannibalization" so that seems to back up the prefix/suffix analysis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autophagy

Hope this is helpful!