Physiological roles of autophagy in plants: does plant autophagy have a pro-death function?

Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved intracellular process for vacuolar degradation of cytoplasmic components. Early morphological studies suggested that autophagy occurs in plant cells and predicted that autophagy has a variety of functions in plant growth and development. However, it is only since the identification of autophagy genes that the physiological roles of autophagy in plants have become apparent. Recent reverse genetic studies indicate that autophagy defects in higher plants result in early senescence and excessive immunity-related programmed cell death (PCD), irrespective of nutrient conditions, suggesting that plant autophagy has an important pro-survival function during these types of cell death. Further biochemical and pharmacological studies in combination with double mutant analyses revealed that excessive salicylic acid (SA) signaling is a major factor in autophagy-defective plant-dependent cell death and that the SA signal can induce autophagy. These results demonstrate a novel physiological function for plant autophagy that operates a negative feedback loop to modulate SA signaling.