AUTHOR=Mintern Justine , Villadangos Jose A.

TITLE=Autophagy and Mechanisms of Effective Immunity

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Immunology

VOLUME=Volume 3 - 2012

YEAR=2012

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2012.00060

DOI=10.3389/fimmu.2012.00060

ISSN=1664-3224

ABSTRACT=Macroautophagy (autophagy) is a cellular pathway facilitating several critical functions. First, by acting to ensure the degradation of damaged cellular content, autophagy is an important mechanism of intracellular homeostasis. Second, autophagy is a major trafficking pathway, shuttling content between the cytosol and the lysosomal compartment. Given these two key roles, autophagy can have significant and sometimes unexpected consequences on mechanisms that initiate robust immunity. Here, we will discuss the impact of autophagy on pathways of innate and adaptive immune responses including inflammatory cytokine production, antigen processing and T and B lymphocyte immunity.