title: Antimicrobial effectors in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans: an outgroup to the Arthropoda.
abstract: Nematodes and arthropods likely form the taxon Ecdysozoa. Information on antimicrobial effectors from the model nematode Caenorhabditis elegans may thus shed light on the evolutionary origin of these defences in arthropods. This nematode species possesses an extensive armory of putative antimicrobial effector proteins, such as lysozymes, caenopores (or saposin-like proteins), defensin-like peptides, caenacins and neuropeptide-like proteins, in addition to the production of reactive oxygen species and autophagy. As C. elegans is a bacterivore that lives in microbe-rich environments, some of its effector peptides and proteins likely function in both digestion of bacterial food and pathogen elimination. In this review, we provide an overview of C. elegans immune effector proteins and mechanisms. We summarize the experimental evidence of their antimicrobial function and involvement in the response to pathogen infection. We further evaluate the microbe-induced expression of effector genes using WormExp, a recently established database for C. elegans gene expression analysis. We emphasize the need for further analysis at the protein level to demonstrate an antimicrobial activity of these molecules both in vitro and in vivoThis article is part of the themed issue 'Evolutionary ecology of arthropod antimicrobial peptides'.
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Ecology and Genetics, University of Kiel, Kiel 24098, Germany.
authors.forename: Katja
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Dierking
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Ecology and Genetics, University of Kiel, Kiel 24098, Germany.
authors.forename: Wentao
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Ecology and Genetics, University of Kiel, Kiel 24098, Germany hschulenburg@zoologie.uni-kiel.de.
authors.forename: Hinrich
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Schulenburg
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D023181:Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000235:genetics* / Q000382:microbiology* / Q000821:virology; D029742:Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D054884:Host-Pathogen Interactions; D007162:Immunoproteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D023181:Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides; D029742:Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins; D007162:Immunoproteins
keywords: Caenorhabditis elegans; antimicrobial peptides; caenacins; caenopores; lysozymes; reactive oxygen species