From head to tail it’s a 2 way street for neuro-immune communication

Animals need to be able to rapidly andeffectively respond to changes in their external and internal environment. To achieve this the nervous and immune systems need to coordinate their responses, integrating multiple cues including presence of potential patho-gens, and availability of food. In our recent study 1 we demonstrate that sig-naling by sensory neurons in the head using the classical neurotransmitter sero-tonin can negatively regulate the rectal epithelial immune response upon infec-tion of C. elegans with the naturally occurring bacterial pathogen Microbacte-rium nematophilum (M. nematophilum). The complicated nature of the mamma-lian brain and immune system has made it difficult to identify the molecular mechanisms mediating these interac-tions. With its simple, well described, nervous system and a rapidly growing understanding of its immune system, C. elegans has emerged as an excellent model to study the mechanisms by which animals recognize pathogens and coordi-nate behavioral and cellular immune responses to infection