Multiple Roles of the Cytoskeleton in Bacterial Autophagy

Several bacterial pathogens are targeted by macroautophagy (referred to as autophagy hereafter), and autophagy is widely recognized as an important antibacterial defence mechanism [1]. On the other hand, new work has shown that some bacterial pathogens have mechanisms to avoid or exploit the autophagy machinery for intracellular survival [2–4]. Strikingly, the host cytoskeleton plays a crucial role in autophagy and its ability to restrict or promote bacterial replication. A complete understanding of autophagy-cytoskeleton interactions is therefore needed to enable the manipulation of autophagy for therapeutic purposes. Actin, microtubules, intermediate filaments, and septins are four main cytoskeletal components of vertebrate cells (Box 1), yet their roles in autophagy are not fully understood. This Pearl revisits our current understanding of autophagy-cytoskeleton interactions and highlights new concepts and emerging roles for the cytoskeleton in bacterial autophagy.