Apical extracellular matrices (aECMs) coat the exposed surfaces of animal bodies to shape
tissues, influence social interactions, and protect against pathogens and other …

The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has been a model for studying infection since the
early 2000s and many major discoveries have been made regarding its innate immune …

In its natural habitat, C. elegans encounters a wide variety of microbes, including food,
commensals and pathogens. To be able to survive long enough to reproduce, C. elegans …

Intestinal epithelial cells are subject to attack by a diverse array of microbes, including
intracellular as well as extracellular pathogens. While defense in epithelial cells can be …

Defense against intracellular infection has been extensively studied in vertebrate hosts, but
less is known about invertebrate hosts; specifically, the transcription factors that induce …

Although the type‐I interferon (IFN‐I) response is considered vertebrate‐specific, recent
findings about the Intracellular Pathogen Response (IPR) in nematode Caenorhabditis …

Immune genes are under intense, pathogen-induced pressure, which causes these genes to
diversify over evolutionary time and become species-specific. Through a forward genetic …

Oomycetes were recently discovered as natural pathogens of Caenorhabditis elegans, and
pathogen recognition alone was shown to be sufficient to activate a protective transcriptional …

Polintons are double-stranded DNA, virus-like self-synthesizing transposons widely found in
eukaryotic genomes. Recent metagenomic discoveries of Polinton-like viruses are …

The immune system continually battles against pathogen-induced pressures, which often
leads to the evolutionary expansion of immune gene families in a species-specific manner …