The fatty acid oleate is required for innate immune activation and pathogen defense in Caenorhabditis elegans
Authors
Anderson, Sarah M.Cheesman, Hilary K.
Peterson, Nicholas D.
Salisbury, Elisabeth B.
Soukas, Alexander A.
Pukkila-Worley, Read
UMass Chan Affiliations
Graduate School of Biomedical SciencesProgram in Innate Immunity, Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology
Document Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
2019-06-17Keywords
OleatesCaenorhabditis elegans
Fatty acids
Pseudomonas aeruginosa
Immune activation
Bacterial pathogens
RNA interference
Immune response
Bacteria
Cellular and Molecular Physiology
Immunity
Immunopathology
Lipids
Microbiology
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Fatty acids affect a number of physiological processes, in addition to forming the building blocks of membranes and body fat stores. In this study, we uncover a role for the monounsaturated fatty acid oleate in the innate immune response of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. From an RNAi screen for regulators of innate immune defense genes, we identified the two stearoyl-coenzyme A desaturases that synthesize oleate in C. elegans. We show that the synthesis of oleate is necessary for the pathogen-mediated induction of immune defense genes. Accordingly, C. elegans deficient in oleate production are hypersusceptible to infection with diverse human pathogens, which can be rescued by the addition of exogenous oleate. However, oleate is not sufficient to drive protective immune activation. Together, these data add to the known health-promoting effects of monounsaturated fatty acids, and suggest an ancient link between nutrient stores, metabolism, and host susceptibility to bacterial infection.Source
PLoS Pathog. 2019 Jun 17;15(6):e1007893. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1007893. eCollection 2019 Jun. Link to article on publisher's site
DOI
10.1371/journal.ppat.1007893Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/41110PubMed ID
31206555Related Resources
Rights
Copyright: © 2019 Anderson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Distribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1371/journal.ppat.1007893
Scopus Count
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Copyright: © 2019 Anderson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.