NHR-14 loss of function couples intestinal iron uptake with innate immunity in C. elegans through PQM-1 signaling
Abstract
Iron is essential for survival of most organisms. All organisms have thus developed mechanisms to sense, acquire and sequester iron. In C. elegans, iron uptake and sequestration are regulated by HIF-1. We previously showed that hif-1 mutants are developmentally delayed when grown under iron limitation. Here we identify nhr-14, encoding a nuclear receptor, in a screen conducted for mutations that rescue the developmental delay of hif-1 mutants under iron limitation. nhr-14 loss upregulates the intestinal metal transporter SMF-3 to increase iron uptake in hif-1 mutants. nhr-14 mutants display increased expression of innate immune genes and DAF-16/FoxO-Class II genes, and enhanced resistance to Pseudomonas aeruginosa. These responses are dependent on the transcription factor PQM-1, which localizes to intestinal cell nuclei in nhr-14 mutants. Our data reveal how C. elegans utilizes nuclear receptors to regulate innate immunity and iron availability, and show iron sequestration as a component of the innate immune response.
Data availability
RNA-seq data has been deposited in GEO under accession code GSE89783.In addition, raw RNA-seq data is reported in the source data files
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
NIH Office of the Director (R01DK068602)
- Elizabeth A Leibold
NIH Office of the Director (T32DK007115)
- Cole P Anderson
NIH Office of the Director (T32DK007115)
- Paul M Rindler
NIH Office of the Director (R00HG006922)
- Jason Gertz
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Bruno Lemaître, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
Version history
- Received: April 8, 2019
- Accepted: September 17, 2019
- Accepted Manuscript published: September 18, 2019 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: October 4, 2019 (version 2)
- Version of Record updated: October 15, 2019 (version 3)
Copyright
© 2019, Rajan et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 2,612
- views
-
- 386
- downloads
-
- 26
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Cell Biology
Retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells show heterogeneous levels of pigmentation when cultured in vitro. To know whether their color in appearance is correlated with the function of the RPE, we analyzed the color intensities of human-induced pluripotent stem cell-derived RPE cells (iPSC-RPE) together with the gene expression profile at the single-cell level. For this purpose, we utilized our recent invention, Automated Live imaging and cell Picking System (ALPS), which enabled photographing each cell before RNA-sequencing analysis to profile the gene expression of each cell. While our iPSC-RPE were categorized into four clusters by gene expression, the color intensity of iPSC-RPE did not project any specific gene expression profiles. We reasoned this by less correlation between the actual color and the gene expressions that directly define the level of pigmentation, from which we hypothesized the color of RPE cells may be a temporal condition not strongly indicating the functional characteristics of the RPE.
-
- Cancer Biology
- Cell Biology
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma carries a dismal prognosis, with high rates of metastasis and few treatment options. Hyperactivation of KRAS in almost all tumours drives RAC1 activation, conferring enhanced migratory and proliferative capacity as well as macropinocytosis. Macropinocytosis is well understood as a nutrient scavenging mechanism, but little is known about its functions in trafficking of signaling receptors. We find that CYRI-B is highly expressed in pancreatic tumours in a mouse model of KRAS and p53-driven pancreatic cancer. Deletion of Cyrib (the gene encoding CYRI-B protein) accelerates tumourigenesis, leading to enhanced ERK and JNK-induced proliferation in precancerous lesions, indicating a potential role as a buffer of RAC1 hyperactivation in early stages. However, as disease progresses, loss of CYRI-B inhibits metastasis. CYRI-B depleted tumour cells show reduced chemotactic responses to lysophosphatidic acid, a major driver of tumour spread, due to impaired macropinocytic uptake of the lysophosphatidic acid receptor-1. Overall, we implicate CYRI-B as a mediator of growth and signaling in pancreatic cancer, providing new insights into pathways controlling metastasis.