A Persistence Detector for Metabolic Network Rewiring in an Animal.

ABSTRACT: Biological systems must possess mechanisms that prevent inappropriate responses to spurious environmental inputs. Caenorhabditis elegans has two breakdown pathways for the short-chain fatty acid propionate: a canonical, vitamin B12-dependent pathway and a propionate shunt that is used when vitamin B12 levels are low. The shunt pathway is kept off when there is sufficient flux through the canonical pathway, likely to avoid generating shunt-specific toxic intermediates. Here, we discovered a transcriptional regulatory circuit that activates shunt gene expression upon propionate buildup. Nuclear hormone receptor 10 (NHR-10) and NHR-68 function together as a "persistence detector" in a type 1, coherent feed-forward loop with an AND-logic gate to delay shunt activation upon propionate accumulat

SUBMITTER: Bulcha JT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6368391 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature