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Recent insights into cell death and autophagy
Author(s) -
Fitzwalter Brent E.,
Thorburn Andrew
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the febs journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.981
H-Index - 204
eISSN - 1742-4658
pISSN - 1742-464X
DOI - 10.1111/febs.13515
Subject(s) - autophagy , programmed cell death , microbiology and biotechnology , biology , cell , mechanism (biology) , context (archaeology) , neuroscience , apoptosis , genetics , paleontology , philosophy , epistemology
Macroautophagy (hereafter autophagy) is an evolutionarily‐ancient mechanism by which cellular material is delivered to lysosomes for degradation. Autophagy and cell death are intimately linked. For example, both processes often use the same molecular machinery and recent work suggests that autophagy has great influence over a cell's decision to live or die. However, this decision‐making is complicated by the fact that the role of autophagy in determining whether a cell should live or die goes both ways: autophagy inhibition can result in more or less cell death depending on the death stimulus, cell type or context. Autophagy may also differentially affect different types of cell death. In the present review, we discuss the recent literature that helps make sense of this apparently inconsistent role of autophagy in influencing a cell to live or die.