Solid cancers exhibit a dynamic balance between cell death and proliferation ensuring continuous tumour maintenance and growth(1,2). Increasing evidence links enhanced cancer cell apoptosis to paracrine activation of cells in the tumour microenvironment in ...
Recognition of DNA is an evolutionarily highly conserved mechanism of immunity. In mammals, the cGAS-STING pathway plays a central role in coupling DNA sensing to the execution of innate immune mechanisms, both in contexts of infection as well as in noninf ...
Nucleic acid sensing through pattern recognition receptors is critical for immune recognition of microbial infections. Microbial DNA is frequently methylated at the N-6 position of adenines (m6A), a modification that is rare in mammalian host DNA. We show ...
Coupling DNA sensing to the initiation of immune responses necessitates auxiliary control mechanisms to avoid autoimmunity. A key factor is the exonuclease TREX1, which antagonizes DNA-mediated activation of cGAS. Two studies, by Mohr et al. (2021) and Zho ...
The cGAS-STING pathway drives innate immune activation in response to cytosolic DNA. This is important for immunity to bacteria and viruses, but aberrant cGAS-STING activity is also linked to inflammatory disease. Here, Ablasser and colleagues discuss how ...
DNA methylation is a fundamental epigenetic modification, important across biological processes. The maintenance methyltransferase DNMT1 is essential for lineage differentiation during development, but its functions in tissue homeostasis are incompletely u ...
