Self‐eating and self‐defense: autophagy controls innate immunity and adaptive immunity

Review on how the self‐eating (autophagy) process could regulate the self‐defense (immune) system. Autophagy (macroautophagy; “self‐eating”) is a degradation process, in which cytoplasmic content is engulfed and degraded by the lysosome. And, immunity is an important mechanism of the “self‐defense” system. Autophagy has long been recognized as a stress response to nutrient deprivation. This will provide energy and anabolic building blocks to maintain cellular bioenergetic homeostasis. Thus, autophagy plays critical roles in regulating a wide variety of pathophysiological processes, including tumorigenesis, embryo development, tissue remodeling, and most recently, immunity. The latter shows that a self‐eating (autophagy) process could regulate a self‐defense (immune) system. In this review, we summarize the recent findings regarding the regulatory and mechanistic insights of the autophagy pathway in immunity.