Autophagy, an intracellular degradation process highly conserved from yeast to 
humans, is viewed as an important defence mechanism to clear intracellular 
bacteria. However, recent work has shown that autophagy may have different roles 
during different bacterial infections that restrict bacterial replication 
(antibacterial autophagy), act in cell autonomous signalling (non-bacterial 
autophagy) or support bacterial replication (pro-bacterial autophagy). This 
review will focus on newfound interactions of autophagy and pathogenic bacteria, 
highlighting that, in addition to delivering bacteria to the lysosome, autophagy 
responding to bacterial invasion may have a much broader role in mediating 
disease outcome.