Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of Kansas, 5004 Haworth Hall, 1200 Sunnyside Ave, KS, 66045, Lawrence, USA.
BMC Genomics. 2022 Mar 23;23(1):229. doi: 10.1186/s12864-022-08455-2.
The soil-dwelling nematode Caenorhabditis elegans serves as a model system to study innate immunity against microbial pathogens. C. elegans have been collected from around the world, where they, presumably, adapted to regional microbial ecologies. Here we use survival assays and RNA-sequencing to better understand how two isolates from disparate climates respond to pathogenic bacteria. We found that, relative to N2 (originally isolated in Bristol, UK), CB4856 (isolated in Hawaii), was more susceptible to the Gram-positive microbe, Staphylococcus epidermidis, but equally susceptible to Staphylococcus aureus as well as two Gram-negative microbes, Providencia rettgeri and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. We performed transcriptome analysis of infected worms and found gene-expression profiles were considerably different in an isolate-specific and microbe-specific manner. We performed GO term analysis to categorize differential gene expression in response to S. epidermidis. In N2, genes that encoded detoxification enzymes and extracellular matrix proteins were significantly enriched, while in CB4856, genes that encoded detoxification enzymes, C-type lectins, and lipid metabolism proteins were enriched, suggesting they have different responses to S. epidermidis, despite being the same species. Overall, discerning gene expression signatures in an isolate by pathogen manner can help us to understand the different possibilities for the evolution of immune responses within organisms.
土壤线虫秀丽隐杆线虫是研究先天免疫抵御微生物病原体的模式生物系统。秀丽隐杆线虫已在世界各地被收集，它们可能已经适应了当地的微生物生态。在这里，我们使用生存测定和 RNA 测序来更好地了解来自不同气候的两个分离株如何对致病性细菌作出反应。我们发现，与 N2（最初在英国布里斯托尔分离）相比，CB4856（在夏威夷分离）对革兰氏阳性菌表皮葡萄球菌更敏感，但与金黄色葡萄球菌以及两种革兰氏阴性菌普罗维登斯菌和铜绿假单胞菌同样敏感。我们对受感染的蠕虫进行了转录组分析，发现基因表达谱以分离株特异性和微生物特异性的方式存在显著差异。我们进行了 GO 术语分析，以对表皮葡萄球菌诱导的差异基因表达进行分类。在 N2 中，编码解毒酶和细胞外基质蛋白的基因显著富集，而在 CB4856 中，编码解毒酶、C 型凝集素和脂质代谢蛋白的基因富集，这表明尽管它们是同一物种，但它们对表皮葡萄球菌有不同的反应。总的来说，通过病原体的方式辨别分离株中的基因表达特征可以帮助我们理解生物体中免疫反应进化的不同可能性。
