The cooperation between the autophagy machinery and the inflammasome to implement an appropriate innate immune response: do they regulate each other?

Abstract

Autophagy is originally described as the main catabolic pathway responsible for maintaining intracellular nutritional homeostasis that involves the formation of a unique vacuole, the autophagosome, and the interaction with the endosome-lysosome pathways. This conserved machinery plays a key role in immune-protection against different invaders, including pathogenic bacteria, intracellular parasites, and some viruses like herpes simplex and hepatitis C virus. Importantly, autophagy is linked to a number of human diseases and disorders including neurodegenerative disease, Crohn's disease, type II diabetes, tumorigenesis, cardiomyopathy, and fatty liver disease. On the other hand, inflammasomes are multiprotein platforms stimulated upon several environmental conditions and microbial infection. Once assembled, the inflammasomes mediate the maturation of pro-inflammatory cytokines and promote phagosome-lysosome fusion to sustain an innate immune response. The intersections between autophagy and inflammasome have been observed in various diseases and microbial infections. This review highlights the molecular aspects involved in autophagy and inflammasome interactions during different medical conditions and microbial infections.