Autophagy—Cell Survival and Death

Autophagy, which is one of the most important ways to maintain cell homeostasis plays an important regulatory role in cell survival and death. Currently, it is agreed that autophagy promotes or inhibits cell death depending on the internal and external environment and cell type. On the one hand, under normal nutritional conditions autophagy regulates cell survival by energy sensing through the main energy sensing cascade kinases. On the other hand, autophagy regulates the process of cell death. mTOR, Beclin 1, caspases, FLIPs, DAPK, and Tp53 play important regulatory roles in autophagy and apoptosis highlighting the crosstalk between the mechanisms underlying the two death modes. However, energy deficiency caused by PARP1 over-activation and DAPK-PKD pathway activation induces necrosis and autophagy, highlighting the interaction between the two pathways. In addition, autophagy regulates cell death through epigenetic regulation such as histone modification. More investigations on the relationship between autophagy and cell death is ongoing. In the future, there will be more challenges in the study of the relationship between autophagy and cell survival and death. As research increasingly focuses on cell death, the relationship between autophagy and existing and newly discovered cell death types is likely to become more complex. The elucidation of the regulatory role of autophagy in cell survival and death requires more research. Some research results are likely to provide hot topics for further investigations on diseases related to cell death disorders and an experimental basis for the targeted regulation of autophagy for specific treatment of diseases.