Roles of Autophagy in Toxicity Mechanism of Environmental Pollutants

Autophagy is the process that double-or multiple-membrane-bound autophagosome fuses with lysosome to digest damaged organelles or macromolecules within the autophagosome. Although autophagy is regarded as a regular degradative process of unnecessary cellular components to maintain cellular homeostasis, overstimulation of autophagy leads to autophagic cell death. In this paper, we summarized the roles of autophagy in the toxicity mechanism of various environmental pollutants, and provided clues for further investigation in this field.