Autophagy is a catabolic process that is important for the removal of damaged organelles and long-lived pro-teins for the maintenance of cellular homeostasis. It can also serve as innate immunity to remove intracellular microbial pa-thogens. A growing list of viruses has been shown to affect this cellular pathway. Some viruses suppress this pathway for their survival, while others enhance or exploit this pathway to benefit their replication. The effect of viruses on autophagy may also sensitize cells to death or enhance cell survival and play a critical role in viral pathogenesis. In this article, we review the relationships between different viruses and autophagy and discuss how these relationships may affect viruses and their host cells.

Keywords: autophagic vacuoles, autophagosomes, autophagy, viral infections, viral pathogenesis, viral replication