Immune surveillance of cellular damage: lessons from Caenorhabditis elegans.

Damage-driven immune surveillance in Caenorhabditis elegans detects pathogen-induced disruptions to core cellular homeostasis, with perturbations across multiple organelles triggering immune responses.

• Why it matters: Canonical pattern-recognition receptors can be evaded by pathogens, so hosts need a rapid, reliable alternative that monitors functional damage rather than microbial molecules.
• What they did: The work integrates recent findings in Caenorhabditis elegans showing immune activation linked to disruptions in translation, proteostasis, mitochondria, genome/nucleolus, lysosomes, Golgi, inter-organelle communication, lysosome-related organelles, and intestinal distension.
• The result: It proposes an organelle- and tissue-centric framework and suggests potentially conserved principles of damage sensing that operate beyond canonical pattern-recognition mechanisms.