Teams at the Max Delbrück Center and the University of Oxford reported in Nature Cell Biology that autophagy regulates asymmetric mitochondrial inheritance during early CD8+ T‑cell divisions, influencing whether daughter cells become short‑lived effectors or long‑lived memory cells. The study used sequential mitochondrial tagging and functional assays to link autophagy‑mediated clearance with fate outcomes. The findings identify autophagy as a potential lever to bias T‑cell responses, with implications for vaccine design and immunotherapies where enhancing memory T‑cell pools is desirable. Asymmetric cell division here refers to daughter cells receiving unequal cellular components that determine divergent functional paths.