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  • Review Article
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Autophagy and autophagy-related proteins in the immune system

Abstract

Autophagy is an intracellular bulk degradation system that is highly conserved in eukaryotes. The discovery of autophagy-related ('ATG') proteins in the 1990s greatly advanced the mechanistic understanding of autophagy and clarified the fact that autophagy serves important roles in various biological processes. In addition, studies have revealed other roles for the autophagic machinery beyond autophagy. In this Review, we introduce advances in the knowledge of the roles of autophagy and its components in immunity, including innate immunity, inflammatory responses and adaptive immunity.

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Figure 1: The autophagy pathway.

Kim Caesar/Nature Publishing Group

Figure 2: Xenophagy and LAP.

Kim Caesar/Nature Publishing Group

Figure 3: Autophagy suppresses the inflammasome-mediated production of IL-1β.

Kim Caesar/Nature Publishing Group

Figure 4: ATG proteins in MHC-restricted antigen presentation.

Kim Caesar/Nature Publishing Group

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Acknowledgements

Supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (S.T.S., T.S. and Y.T.), the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development CREST (S.T.S., T.S. and Y.T.), Cancer Research Switzerland (KFS-3234-08-2013 for H.N. and C.M.), Worldwide Cancer Research (14-1033 for H.N. and C.M.), the clinical research programs KFSPMS and KFSPHHLD of the University of Zurich (H.N. and C.M.), the Baugarten Foundation (H.N. and C.M.), the Sobek Foundation (H.N. and C.M.), Fondation Acteria (H.N. and C.M.), the Swiss Vaccine Research Institute (H.N. and C.M.) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (310030_143979 and CRSII3_136241 for H.N. and C.M.).

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Shibutani, S., Saitoh, T., Nowag, H. et al. Autophagy and autophagy-related proteins in the immune system. Nat Immunol 16, 1014–1024 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ni.3273

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