1
Centre d'Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale/Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/Université de la Méditerranée, Case 906, 13288
Marseille
Cedex 9, France.
2
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale U119, Institut Paoli Calmette, 13009
Marseille, France.
3
Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, UPR 9022, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 15 rue Descartes, 67084
Strasbourg
Cedex, France.
4
Centre de Biochimie Structurale, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique UMR 5048, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale UMR 554, Université de Montpellier 1, 29, rue de Navacelles, 34090
Montpellier
Cedex, France.
5
National Institute of Genetics, Mishima
411, Japan.
Both plants and animals respond to infection by synthesizing compounds that directly inhibit or kill invading pathogens. We report here the identification of infection-inducible antimicrobial peptides in Caenorhabditis elegans. Expression of two of these peptides, NLP-29 and NLP-31, was differentially regulated by fungal and bacterial infection and was controlled in part by tir-1, which encodes an ortholog of SARM, a Toll−interleukin 1 receptor (TIR) domain protein. Inactivation of tir-1 by RNA interference caused increased susceptibility to infection. We identify protein partners for TIR-1 and show that the small GTPase Rab1 and the f subunit of ATP synthase participate specifically in the control of antimicrobial peptide gene expression. As the activity of tir-1 was independent of the single nematode Toll-like receptor, TIR-1 may represent a component of a previously uncharacterized, but conserved, innate immune signaling pathway.
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