CGAS and infection: In this minireview, to further improve our understanding of the regulatory mechanisms of autophagy and the cGAS–STING signaling pathway, we discuss 1) the multifaceted crosstalk between autophagy and the cGAS–STING signaling pathway in type I IFN production and 2) models of their mutual regulation during pathogen infection, providing a new perspective for studying the mechanisms of host resistance to pathogenic microbial infection.