1. DAF-16/FoxO and EGL-27/GATA promote developmental growth in response to persistent somatic DNA damage
- Author
-
Peter Frommolt, Maria A. Ermolaeva, Jennifer I. Schneider, Bernhard Schermer, Michael M. Mueller, Sebastian Greiss, Laia Castells-Roca, Roman-Ulrich Müller, Vipin Babu, Björn Schumacher, Ashley B. Williams, and Thomas Benzing
- Subjects
Paraquat ,Aging ,DNA Repair ,DNA repair ,DNA damage ,PROTEIN ,Biology ,Article ,PATHWAY ,Animals, Genetically Modified ,Transcription (biology) ,Animals ,TRANSCRIPTION ,LONGEVITY ,Caenorhabditis elegans ,Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins ,Gene ,Transcription factor ,INDUCED APOPTOSIS ,GENE-EXPRESSION ,LIFE-SPAN ,NEMATODE CAENORHABDITIS-ELEGANS ,2. Zero hunger ,Regulation of gene expression ,Herbicides ,fungi ,Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental ,Forkhead Transcription Factors ,Cell Biology ,Cell biology ,DNA-Binding Proteins ,NUCLEOTIDE EXCISION-REPAIR ,C-ELEGANS ,GATA transcription factor ,Nucleotide excision repair ,DNA Damage ,Signal Transduction ,Transcription Factors - Abstract
Genome maintenance defects cause complex disease phenotypes characterized by developmental failure, cancer susceptibility and premature ageing. It remains poorly understood how DNA damage responses function during organismal development and maintain tissue functionality when DNA damage accumulates with ageing. Here we show that the FOXO transcription factor DAF-16 is activated in response to DNA damage during development, whereas the DNA damage responsiveness of DAF-16 declines with ageing. We find that in contrast to its established role in mediating starvation arrest, DAF-16 alleviates DNA-damage-induced developmental arrest and even in the absence of DNA repair promotes developmental growth and enhances somatic tissue functionality. We demonstrate that the GATA transcription factor EGL-27 co-regulates DAF-16 target genes in response to DNA damage and together with DAF-16 promotes developmental growth. We propose that EGL-27/GATA activity specifies DAF-16-mediated DNA damage responses to enable developmental progression and to prolong tissue functioning when DNA damage persists.
- Published
- 2014