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Review

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 8, 741–752 (1 September 2007) | doi:10.1038/nrm2239

Self-eating and self-killing: crosstalk between autophagy and apoptosis

M. Chiara Maiuri , Einat Zalckvar , Adi Kimchi & Guido Kroemer

The functional relationship between apoptosis ('self-killing') and autophagy ('self-eating') is complex in the sense that, under certain circumstances, autophagy constitutes a stress adaptation that avoids cell death (and suppresses apoptosis), whereas in other cellular settings, it constitutes an alternative cell-death pathway. Autophagy and apoptosis may be triggered by common upstream signals, and sometimes this results in combined autophagy and apoptosis; in other instances, the cell switches between the two responses in a mutually exclusive manner. On a molecular level, this means that the apoptotic and autophagic response machineries share common pathways that either link or polarize the cellular responses.