Purine salvage enzymes are innate immune regulators in Caenorhabditis briggsae and Caenorhabditis remanei

Description

Mya G. Flannery, Mona A. Hamad, and Spencer S. Gang test whether two enzymes of purine salvage, a recycling pathway for DNA building blocks, also guard worms against infection. In the standard lab worm, breaking these enzymes switches on an internal defense program against intracellular pathogens. The trio asked whether the same holds in two cousin species, Caenorhabditis briggsae and Caenorhabditis remanei. They silenced the matching genes in each species with a feeding method.

Silencing either enzyme switched on the worm versions of the defense marker genes in both species, just as in the lab worm. The result shows the immune role of these recycling enzymes is conserved across the genus, not a quirk of one species. That conservation suggests an old, shared link between basic metabolism and innate defense. The work gives evolution researchers a firm comparative foothold for tracing how the pathway was recruited into immunity.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/PMC13647126