Mitochondria: Powering the Innate Immune Response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection

Abstract

Within the last decade, we have learned that damaged mitochondria activate many of the same innate immune pathways that evolved to sense and respond to intracellular pathogens. These shared responses include cytosolic nucleic acid-sensing and type I interferon (IFN) expression, inflammasome activation that leads to pyroptosis, and selective autophagy (called mitophagy when mitochondria are the cargo).