Common and divergent functions of Beclin 1 and Beclin 2

In a recent paper published in Cell, He and colleagues reported the identification and functional characterization of Beclin 2, a mammal-specific homolog of the evolutionarily conserved autophagy-regulatory and oncosuppressive factor Beclin 1. In spite of a non-negligible degree of sequence identity, Beclin 1 and Beclin 2 differ from each other in multiple aspects, including their functional profile as well as the genomic organization of the respective loci.