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Three Muscle-Specific DAF-16/FOXO Transcriptional Targets Activated by Reduced Insulin/IGF-1 Signaling

ABSTRACT: C. elegans insulin/insulin-like growth factor 1 signaling, IIS, affects diverse physiological processes through the DAF-16/FOXO transcription factor. Despite its ubiquitous presence in somatic cells, DAF-16’s effects exhibit prevalent tissue specificity as well as tissue crosstalk. This implies that tissue-specific DAF-16 transcriptional programs contribute to functional diversity of IIS. To further investigate this possibility, we sought muscle-cell-specific DAF-16 transcriptional targets. Using fluorescence-activated cell sorting to enrich for body wall muscle cells from young hermaphroditic adults, we compared the muscle cell mRNA transcriptomes under conditions of high and low IIS activity, with and without DAF-16. We further analyzed DAF-16a’s binding sites in muscle and intestine cells by chromatin-immunoprecipitation sequencing. Combined output of these analyses is 12 candidate DAF-16 targets enriched for muscle cells. Transcriptional and translational reporters for three out of the four top candidates - a secreted protein C54F6.5, a calcium-binding protein CEX-1/calexcitin, and a fatty acid metabolic enzyme MLCD-1/MCD - showed DAF-16-dependent activation specifically in body wall muscle cells. Notably, reporters for C54F6.5 and cex-1 exhibit DAF-16-independent, constitutive expression in non-muscle cells, explaining their low rank or absence from the DAF-16 target lists generated by whole-animal microarray or mRNA-sequencing analyses. These results highlight the need to examine FOXO targets in a cell-type-specific manner.

ORGANISM(S): Caenorhabditis elegans

PROVIDER: GSE315486 | GEO | 2026/02/04

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Post-embryonic development of the nematode C. elegans is governed by nutrient availability. L1-stage larvae remain in a state of developmental arrest after hatching until they feed. This “L1 arrest” (or "L1 diapause") is associated with increased stress resistance, supporting starvation survival. Loss of the transcription factor daf-16/FOXO, an effector of insulin/IGF signaling, results in arrest-defective and starvation-sensitive phenotypes. We show that daf-16/FOXO regulates L1 arrest cell-nonautonomously, suggesting that insulin/IGF signaling regulates at least one additional signaling pathway. We used mRNA-seq to identify candidate signaling molecules affected by daf-16/FOXO during L1 arrest. daf-16/FOXO had overlapping but distinct effects on gene expression in L1 arrest compared to daf-2/InsR adults. Notably, dbl-1/TGF-β, a ligand for the Sma/Mab pathway, and daf-36, which encodes an upstream component of the daf-12/NHR steroid hormone signaling pathway, were up-regulated during L1 arrest in a daf-16/FOXO mutant. Using genetic epistasis analysis, we show that dbl-1/TGF-β and daf-12/NHR steroid hormone signaling pathways are required for the daf-16/FOXO arrest-defective phenotype, suggesting that daf-16/FOXO represses dbl-1/TGF-β and daf-36. The dbl-1/TGF-β and daf-12/NHR pathways have not previously been shown to affect L1 development, but we found that disruption of these pathways delayed L1 development in fed larvae, consistent with these pathways promoting development in starved daf-16/FOXO mutants. Though the dbl-1/TGF-β and daf-12/NHR pathways are epistatic to daf-16/FOXO for the arrest-defective phenotype, disruption of these pathways does not suppress starvation sensitivity of daf-16/FOXO mutants. This observation uncouples starvation survival from developmental arrest, indicating that DAF-16/FOXO targets distinct effectors for each phenotype, and revealing that inappropriate development during starvation does not cause the early demise of daf-16/FOXO mutants. Overall, this study shows that daf-16/FOXO promotes developmental arrest cell-nonautonomously by repressing pathways that promote larval development.

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Three Muscle-Specific DAF-16/FOXO Transcriptional Targets Activated by Reduced Insulin/IGF-1 Signaling

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