Clearance of apoptotic cells, or “efferocytosis,” is essential for diverse processes including embryonic development, tissue turnover, organ regeneration, and immune cell development. The human body is estimated to remove approximately 1% of its body mass via apoptotic cell clearance daily. This poses several intriguing cell metabolism problems. For instance, phagocytes such as macrophages must induce or suppress metabolic pathways to find, engulf, and digest apoptotic cells. Then, phagocytes must manage the potentially burdensome biomass of the engulfed apoptotic cell. Finally, phagocytes reside in complex tissue architectures that vary in nutrient availability, the types of dying cells or debris that require clearance, and the neighboring cells they interact with. Here, we review advances in our understanding of these three key areas of phagocyte metabolism. We end by proposing a model of efferocytosis that integrates recent findings and establishes a new paradigm for testing how efferocytosis prevents chronic inflammatory disease and autoimmunity.

凋亡细胞的清除或“胞吞作用”对于胚胎发育、组织更新、器官再生和免疫细胞发育等多种过程至关重要。据估计，人体每天会通过凋亡细胞清除去除约 1% 的体重。这带来了一些有趣的细胞代谢问题。例如，巨噬细胞等吞噬细胞必须诱导或抑制代谢途径才能发现、吞噬和消化凋亡细胞。然后，吞噬细胞必须管理被吞噬的凋亡细胞的潜在负担的生物量。最后，吞噬细胞存在于复杂的组织结构中，这些结构的营养可用性、需要清除的垂死细胞或碎片的类型以及它们与之相互作用的邻近细胞各不相同。在这里，我们回顾了对吞噬细胞代谢这三个关键领域的理解进展。最后，我们提出了一种胞吞作用模型，该模型整合了最新的发现，并建立了一个新的范式来测试胞吞作用如何预防慢性炎症性疾病和自身免疫。