Coordinates and automorphisms of polynomial and free associative algebras of rank three

We study z-automorphisms of the polynomial algebra Kx, y, z] and the free associative algebra K 〈x, y, z〉 over a field K, i.e., automorphisms that fix the variable z. We survey some recent results on such automorphisms and on the corresponding coordinates. For K 〈x, y, z〉 we include also results about the structure of the z-tame automorphisms and algorithms that recognize z-tame automorphisms and z-tame coordinates.