Atg8-family proteins are the best-studied proteins of the core autophagic 
machinery. They are essential for the elongation and closure of the phagophore 
into a proper autophagosome. Moreover, Atg8-family proteins are associated with 
the phagophore from the initiation of the autophagic process to, or just prior 
to, the fusion between autophagosomes with lysosomes. In addition to their 
implication in autophagosome biogenesis, they are crucial for selective 
autophagy through their ability to interact with selective autophagy receptor 
proteins necessary for the specific targeting of substrates for autophagic 
degradation. In the past few years it has been revealed that Atg8-interacting 
proteins include not only receptors but also components of the core autophagic 
machinery, proteins associated with vesicles and their transport, and specific 
proteins that are selectively degraded by autophagy. Atg8-interacting proteins 
contain a short linear LC3-interacting region/LC3 recognition 
sequence/Atg8-interacting motif (LIR/LRS/AIM) motif which is responsible for 
their interaction with Atg8-family proteins. These proteins are referred to as 
LIR-containing proteins (LIRCPs). So far, many experimental efforts have been 
carried out to identify new LIRCPs, leading to the characterization of some of 
them in the past 10 years. Given the need for the identification of LIRCPs in 
various organisms, we developed the iLIR database ( https://ilir.warwick.ac.uk ) 
as a freely available web resource, listing all the putative canonical LIRCPs 
identified in silico in the proteomes of 8 model organisms using the iLIR 
server, combined with a Gene Ontology (GO) term analysis. Additionally, a 
curated text-mining analysis of the literature permitted us to identify novel 
putative LICRPs in mammals that have not previously been associated with 
autophagy.