Nature 456: 264-268 (2008)

Autophagy controls inflammasome activation: Autophagy-related protein Atg16-like 1 (Atg16L1) is essentially required for autophagy, a bulk degradation system, and is implicated in development of Crohn’s disease, To investigate roles of Atg16L1 in immune response, we generated Atg16L1 knockout mice. We found that Atg16L1-deficient macrophages produce high amount of IL-1β response to LPS. We also found that mice lacking Atg16L1 in hematopoietic cells are highly susceptible to dextran sulfate sodium-induced acute colitis. These results demonstrate that Atg16L1 is an essential component of the autophagic machinery responsible for control of the endotoxin-induced inflammasome activation.