In eukaryotic cells, intracellular signalling pathways, including those involving MAP kinases, are key players in regulating cell adaptation and survival under suboptimal growth conditions and are therefore highly evolutionarily conserved. This conservation allows us to use the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe to unravel the complexity of intracellular signalling in the regulation of autophagy under adverse physiological conditions using a very simple model organism with powerful genetics and cell biology. Our main research interest is to understand how external cues can modulate the activity of multiple signalling pathways to orchestrate a precise autophagic response in time and space, using a wide range of modern molecular cell biology, biochemical and bioimaging techniques.