Abstract
BackgroundCaenorhabditis elegans is a powerful model organism for probing many biological processes including host-pathogen interactions with bacteria and fungi. The recent identification of nematode viruses that naturally infect C. elegans and Caenorhabditis briggsae provides a unique opportunity to define host-virus interactions in these model hosts.ResultsWe analyzed the transcriptional response of pathogen infected C. elegans and C. briggsae by RNA-seq. We identified a total of 320 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in C. elegans following Orsay virus infection. The DEGs of known function were enriched for ubiquitin ligase related genes; however, the majority of the genes were of unknown function. Interestingly, many DEGs that responded to Orsay virus infection were similar to those induced by Nematocida parisii infection, which is a natural microsporidia pathogen of C. elegans that like Orsay virus infects intestinal cells. Furthermore, comparison of the Orsay virus DEGs in C. elegans to Santeuil virus DEGs in C. briggsae identified 58 C. elegans genes whose orthologs were likewise differentially expressed in C. briggsae, thereby defining an evolutionarily conserved response to viral infection.ConclusionsThe two different species C. elegans and C. briggsae, which diverged ~18 million years ago, share a common set of transcriptionally responsive genes to viral infection. Furthermore, a subset of these genes were also differentially expressed following infection by a eukaryotic pathogen, N. parisii, suggesting that these genes may constitute a broader pan-microbial response to infection.
Highlights
Caenorhabditis elegans is a powerful model organism for probing many biological processes including host-pathogen interactions with bacteria and fungi
C. elegans transcriptional response to Orsay virus infection To define the transcriptional changes in C. elegans upon Orsay virus infection, we compared RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) results from infected and non-infected animals
We compared our results with a recently published expression profile of N. parisii infection, which was performed in a different genetic background [12], and found the majority of the up-regulated genes that we identified were upregulated at 8 h post infection in the previous publication (Additional files 4 and 5)
Summary
Caenorhabditis elegans is a powerful model organism for probing many biological processes including host-pathogen interactions with bacteria and fungi. The recent identification of nematode viruses that naturally infect C. elegans and Caenorhabditis briggsae provides a unique opportunity to define host-virus interactions in these model hosts. Caenorhabditis elegans is a model organism widely used to interrogate host-pathogen interactions [1, 2]. Studies in C. elegans have identified genes that are essential for immunity against bacterial and fungal pathogens. There is some overlap in the transcriptional responses to the various bacterial and fungal infections, suggesting that C. elegans maintains both “pan-microbial” and “microbe-specific” repertoires of pathogen response genes [13]. From the transcriptionally induced genes, some functional immune response genes have been identified and characterized
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