Modulation of Host Autophagy during Bacterial Infection: Sabotaging Host Munitions for Pathogen Nutrition.
Abstract
Cellular homeostasis requires the balanced regulation of anabolic and catabolic processes. While anabolic metabolism consumes energy to build up cellular components, catabolic processes break down organic matters in order to provide energy for the cell and its anabolic processes. Autophagy is a highly conserved and regulated catabolic process by which the eukaryotic cell degrades unnecessary, undesirable, or dysfunctional cellular components, including organelles (1–3). Autophagy is induced by a variety of extra-and intracellular stress stimuli, such as nutrient starvation, oxidative stress, or accumulation of damaged organelles or toxic protein aggregates. Initiation of autophagy first leads to the formation of cup-shaped structures known as phagophores that engulf the undesirable or damaged cellular components. Subsequent elongation of phagophores form double-membrane vesicles called autophagosomes, which deliver their cargo to lysosomes where the content is degraded and recycled (1–3). Autophagy plays a central role in quality control of organelles and proteins, and additionally is a key mechanism to maintain cellular energy levels and nutrient homeostasis during starvation, promoting the recycling and salvage of cellular nutrients. Furthermore, the cellular autophagic machinery is also used to remove invading intracellular pathogens, a process called xenophagy (1, 2). In this case, phagophores engulf invading microbes forming autophagosomes and steering them toward lysosomal degradation. Thus, xenophagy is an innate immune mechanism against bacterial infection that has been shown to be essential to restrict intracellular growth of many bacteria such as Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (4), Mycobacterium tuberculosis (5, 6), Listeria monocytogenes (7), or Group A Streptococcus (8).
Origin : Publication funded by an institution
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