Transcript – Oxidative Stress Enhances Mitochondrial DNA-Dependent Type I Interferon Responses

Hello, my name is Philip West, I’m an assistant professor in the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis and Immunology at the Texas A&M Health Science Center, and I’m here to present my poster titled “Oxidative Stress Enhances Mitochondrial DNA-Dependent Type I Interferon Responses.” This is a collaborative project between Dr. Pingwei Lie in the Departments of Chemistry and Physics at Texas A&M and Dr. Jeffrey Kappler in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Medicine at Texas A&M Health Science Center. Most of the work on this poster was done by a Ph.D. student in my laboratory, Jonjo LÉ, with assistance from Saeed Menissy and Serena Kang, who are both undergraduates working in my laboratory. Basically, we found in this project we’ve identified that oxidative damage, mitochondrial DNA is important in driving Type one interferon responses through the casting pathway. And we found that if mitochondrial DNA is oxidized, it is not turned over in the cytoplasm efficiently. It can accumulate. And specifically, sequences from the deluge of mitochondrial DNA can accumulate in the cytoplasm to drive Type one interferons to the cGAS-STING pathway. We’ve also found that an additional DNA sensor called ZEPP One works along with cGASS to drive sting signaling to type one interferons. And overall, we believe this is an important advancement that will help us understand how mitochondrial DNA drives cGAS-STING pathway and may have implications for understanding diseases that involve the dysregulation of this pathway, including cancer and autoimmunity. Thank you very much.