Escape of intracellular Shigella from autophagy

The degradation of undesirable cellular components or organelles, including invading microbes, by autophagy is crucial for cell survival. Here, Shigella, an invasive bacteria, was found to be able to escape autophagy by secreting IcsB by means of the type III secretion system. Mutant bacteria lacking IcsB were trapped by autophagy during multiplication within the host cells. IcsB did not directly inhibit autophagy. Rather, Shigella VirG, a protein required for intracellular actin-based motility, induced autophagy by binding to the autophagy protein, Atg5. In nonmutant Shigella, this binding is competitively inhibited by IcsB binding to VirG.