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Kurz, CL, Shapira, M, Chen, K, Baillie, DL and Tan, MW (2007) Caenorhabditis elegans pgp-5 is involved in resistance to bacterial infection and heavy metal and its regulation requires TIR-1 and a p38 map kinase cascade. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 363:438-43

Animals and plants respond to bacterial infections and environmental stresses by inducing overlapping repertoires of defense genes. How the signals associated with infection and abiotic stresses are differentially integrated within a whole organism remains to be fully addressed. We show that the transcription of a Caenorhabditis elegans ABC transporter, pgp-5 is induced by both bacterial infection and heavy metal stress, but the magnitude and tissue distribution of its expression differs, depending on the type of stressor. PGP-5 contributes to resistance to bacterial infection and heavy metals. Using pgp-5 transcription as a read-out, we show that signals from both biotic and abiotic stresses are integrated by TIR-1, a TIR domain adaptor protein orthologous to human SARM, and a p38 MAP kinase signaling cassette. We further demonstrate that not all the TIR-1 isoforms are necessary for nematode resistance to infection, suggesting a molecular basis for the differential response to abiotic and biotic stress.

PubMed PMC2276653 Online version:10.1016/j.bbrc.2007.08.190

Animals; Caenorhabditis elegans/drug effects; Caenorhabditis elegans/immunology; Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins/immunology; Cytoskeletal Proteins/immunology; Gene Expression Regulation/drug effects; Gene Expression Regulation/physiology; Immunity, Innate/immunology; Metals, Heavy/pharmacology; P-Glycoprotein/immunology; Protozoan Proteins/immunology; Pseudomonas Infections/immunology; Receptors, G-Protein-Coupled; p38 Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases/immunology