Autophagy as an emerging arena for plant–pathogen interactions

Abstract

Autophagy is a highly conserved degradation and recycling process that controls cellular homeostasis, stress adaptation, and programmed cell death in eukaryotes. Emerging evidence indicates that autophagy is a key regulator of plant innate immunity and contributes with both pro-death and pro-survival functions to antimicrobial defences, depending on the pathogenic lifestyle. In turn, several pathogens have co-opted and evolved strategies to manipulate host autophagy pathways to the benefit of infection, while some eukaryotic microbes require their own autophagy machinery for successful pathogenesis. In this review, we present and discuss recent advances that exemplify the important role of pro- and antimicrobial autophagy in plant–pathogen interactions.