If the thought of self-cannibalization is not appealing to you, you may not want to read the next sentence . . . Your cells are literally eating themselves right now! In the 1960s, Christian de Duve named this process “autophagy” from the Greek auto (self) and phagein (to eat). He was later awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his contribution to the cell biology field. Little did de Duve know what an issue this word would cause: do you pronounce it “aw-tof-a-gee” or, “auto-fay-gee”? Well, actually – it’s a bit like tom-ay-tow/tom-ah-tow – both are right! As de Duve himself said, “I coined the word, but not the pronunciation.”