"How Caenorhabditis elegans responds to Candida albicans: from parental attraction to progeny rejection"

D'ALMEIDA ROMINA ELISA; RAO PRUSTY REETA

Glasgow

Conferencia; 24th International C. elegans Conference; 2023

GENETIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA (GSA)

Caenorhabditis elegans response against Candida albicans: from parental attraction to progeny rejectionIn its natural habitat, when Caenorhabditis elegans consumes harmful bacteria, its intestine is colonized, triggering responses that include the activation of the immune system to clear the infection, and the nervous system to escape from the pathogen, to learn to avoid it the future and, to transmit epigenetically the learned information to the next generations as part of the strategies to improve survival of the progeny. Using the powerful genetics and simple yet evolutionarily conserved systems of C. elegans, we aim to describe the neuronal pathways and behavioral responses as well as the mechanism of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance of exposure to fungi, like the human pathogen Candida albicans. Presenting a choice of microbial foods to naïve C. elegans, we observed a strong preference for C. albicans over the non-pathogenic Escherichia coli OP50, or even the pathogenic bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Subsequently, within 4-6 h, C. elegans escape the C. albicans lawn, in correlation with distension of the anterior part of the nematode’s intestine. In addition, the population of C. elegans in contact with C. albicans for more than 4 h learns to avoid this specific yeast in future encounters, and this learned avoidance behavior is transmitted epigenetically to its progeny for one to four generations. Our findings suggest that the responses to C. albicans mimics mechanisms involved after a P. aeruginosa infection. Future studies will reveal unique pathways to this eukaryotic pathogen.