A game of survival: herpesvirus strategies of autophagy manipulation.

Viruses are a very "clever" group of pathogens and well known for disrupting multiple processes in host cells. One of them is autophagy, a conserved mechanism that relies on degradation of intracellular structures in lysosomes. Autophagy can be triggered in response to viral infections and its aim is to digest viral particles, thereby limiting virus replication and spread. Induction of autophagy during viral infections is mediated by different regulatory pathways, but the biggest participation belongs to PKR and eIF2alpha. In this review we focused on the herpesvirus interactions with autophagic machinery. The Herpesviridae family presents various strategies to manipulate autophagy induction or suppression of that process may depend on cell type and stage of infection. Research carried out in the past 10 years has demonstrated the impact of herpesviruses on autophagy not only during productive infections, but in latency infections also.