Autophagy is a cellular process that targets proteins, lipids and organelles to 
lysosomes for degradation, but it has also been shown to combat infection with 
various pathogenic bacteria. In turn, bacteria have developed diverse strategies 
to avoid autophagy by interfering with autophagy signalling or the autophagy 
machinery and, in some cases, they even exploit autophagy for their growth. In 
this Review, we discuss canonical and non-canonical autophagy pathways and our 
current knowledge of antibacterial autophagy, with a focus on the interplay 
between bacterial factors and autophagy components.