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The Gene bir-2 Codes for an Effector in the C. elegans Immune System

genomics
microbiology
immunology

Abstract

Human proteins that contain BIR repeats comprise a family responsible for critical regulation of apoptosis, cytokinesis, immunity, and cancer. The C. elegans proteins BIR-1 and BIR-2 are in the apoptosis inhibitor family, but they differ from the human proteins in ways that have not been fully characterized; the role of BIR-2 is particularly unclear. We have established a system in C. elegans to assay the role of these molecules in organismal survival under immune challenge. We have established that knockdown of bir-2 has no observable phenotype, but that, in the presence of a challenge to the innate immune system, organismal survival is significantly impaired. Transcriptomic analysis indicates that bir-2 knockdown affects cuticle defense genes as well as a range of immune system modulators and E3 ligase. Our work provides an analysis of the response to a knockdown of bir-2 at the transcriptomic and physiological levels.
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