Omics · study · 2026
Nutrient-responsive and DAF-16/FoxO target H1 histone HIL-1 promotes resistance to starvation and bacterial pathogens in Caenorhabditis elegans
Listed in NCBI GEO
Insulin/IGF-1 signaling (IIS) mediates metabolic and developmental acclimation to stressful conditions including starvation.
Description
The transcription factor DAF-16/FoxO actuates many of the physiological effects of reduced IIS, yet the specific contributions of DAF-16 target genes to stress resistance remain poorly understood. We explore the function of C. elegans H1 linker histone variant hil-1/H1.0, a DAF-16 target that is upregulated during starvation.
The HIL-1 sequence is divergent from the other eight annotated C. elegans H1 variants, and the others are not so highly responsive to nutrient availability and DAF-16 activity, suggesting distinct function. Using knock-in reporters, we find that HIL-1 is expressed ubiquitously in nuclei of L1 and dauer larvae during starvation, but that expression is largely undetectable in fed larvae. Disrupting hil-1 activity through mutation or auxin-inducible degradation led to reduced growth after extended L1 starvation, revealing reduced starvation resistance.
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RNA-seq of hil-1 mutants showed that hil-1 affects expression of relatively few genes. However, hil-1 activates genes involved in the innate immune response, Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection, and components of the nipi-3/TRIB1 immunity pathway. hil-1 mutants display compromised survival upon exposure to P. aeruginosa under reduced IIS, and genes activated by hil-1 promote resistance to P. aeruginosa. Together these results suggest that DAF-16/FoxO activates transcription of hil-1 during starvation to promote resistance to starvation and pathogens.
We demonstrate conditional regulation of an H1 histone, and we reveal a novel mechanism for how IIS promotes stress resistance by identifying a histone variant that connects nutrient sensing to immunity.
Links
Get the data
- GEO FTP directory ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/series/GSE318nnn/GSE318171 ↗
download · from NCBI GEO
Where it is published
- GEO accession page ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE318171 ↗
landing page · from NCBI GEO
Documentation and papers
- PRJNA1416839 ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA1416839 ↗
project · from NCBI GEO
- PubMed 42282618 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42282618 ↗
publication · from NCBI GEO
Topics
- Stated by source
- Caenorhabditis elegans · Expression profiling by high throughput sequencing
- From keywords
- Life Sciences
- Inferred from text
- RNA sequencing 65%
Provenance · 1 source records, 8 field assertions
| Source | Key | Last seen | Raw |
|---|---|---|---|
| NCBI GEO | GSE318171 | 14 d ago | JSON v1 |
| Field | Assertion | Extractor | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| access_level | source · NCBI GEO | connector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[field].local:field:life-sciences | mapping · NCBI GEO | connector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[method].geo_series_type:expression-profiling-by-high-throughput-sequencing | source · NCBI GEO | connector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0 | /gdstype |
| concepts[modality].local:modality:rna-seq | enrichment · NCBI GEO | keyword-concept-rules@1.0.0 | title+description (65%) |
| concepts[organism].NCBITaxon:6239 | source · NCBI GEO | connector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0 | /taxon |
| description | source · NCBI GEO | connector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0 | /summary |
| publication_date | source · NCBI GEO | connector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0 | |
| title | source · NCBI GEO | connector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0 | /title |