Why should cell biologists study microbial pathogens?

Welch, Matthew D.

Autophagy has emerged as a process that is of central interest in the fields of cell biology and immunology, and research in both disciplines has synergized to reveal key ways in which autophagy impacts basic cell function and disease. Studies by cell biologists have uncovered the importance of autophagy in maintaining homeostasis during normal, stressful, or disease conditions, and have identified important molecular players in this pathway (Boya et al., 2013) . Immunologists have discovered that autophagy of pathogens (also called xenophagy) is an important arm of the innate immune response that promotes intracellular pathogen sequestration in autophagosomes and their degradation in lysosomes (Huang and Brumell, 2014; Sorbara and Girardin, 2015) .