Restoration of Proteostasis in the Endoplasmic Reticulum Reverses an Inflammation-Like Response to Cytoplasmic DNA in Caenorhabditis elegans

Abstract

Caenorhabditis elegans possesses a rudimentary innate immune response that serves as a model for various aspects of the human innate immune response. To date, a nematode response to pathogenic cytoplasmic DNA has not been identified... Innate immune responses protect organisms against various insults, but may lead to tissue damage when aberrantly activated. In higher organisms, cytoplasmic DNA can trigger inflammatory responses that can lead to tissue degeneration. Simpler metazoan models could shed new mechanistic light on how inflammatory responses to cytoplasmic DNA lead to pathologies. Here, we show that in a DNase II-defective Caenorhabditis elegans strain, persistent cytoplasmic DNA leads to systemic tissue degeneration and loss of tissue functionality due to impaired proteostasis. These pathological outcomes can be therapeutically alleviated by restoring protein homeostasis, either via ectopic induction of the ER unfolded protein response or N-acetylglucosamine treatment. Our results establish C. elegans as an ancestral metazoan model for studying the outcomes of inflammation-like conditions caused by persistent cytoplasmic DNA and provide insight into potential therapies for human conditions involving chronic inflammation.