The first line response of an animal's immune system to a viral infection

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgency for science to continue to shed light on how viruses infect and how the immune system responds to such threats

Postdoctoral scholars in the Division of Biological Sciences Vladimir Lažetić, Professor Emily Troemel and their colleagues at UC San Diego and NYU Grossman School of Medicine have discovered the key role of "ZIP-1", a protein known as a transcription factor , which helps convert genetic information from DNA to messenger RNA

The finding, published Jan.

"By better understanding immunity to viral infections, we can find new ways to treat viral infections," said Troemel, a professor in the Division of Cell and Developmental Biology

Lažetić used fluorescence tracking to determine which parts of the worm's cells were involved in the infection response

"We found that the subset of genes controlled by ZIP-1 is important for immunity, but not for some of the other phenotypes that we've seen in other animals that activate this immune response," Lažetić said,

For Troemel, the most surprising aspect of the results was the discovery of ZIP-1 as the center of the immune response against multiple threats

Troemel said: "One virus, one fungus and heat stress are all so different, yet we found that they all turn on a set of immune genes through the same central ZIP-1 hub

Troemel's lab is now further exploring the details of this finding, including studying how receptors that worms use to sense viruses (similar to those humans use in immune responses) communicate with ZIP-1 during defense

"Revolutions in biology often come from understanding how simple organisms respond to threats such as infection," Troemel said.

Magazine

Nature Communications

DOI

10.