UC San Diego

Double-stranded RNA is now being identified as one of the most significant activators of antiviral responses. Once cytoplasmic sensors detect dsRNA, a series of antiviral responses will be initiated, including inhibition of protein synthesis, transcriptional induction of many types of cytokines and cell apoptosis. Among those antiviral responses, cell apoptosis might be the most significant one because too much apoptosis will cause irreversible damage to infected organism. However, apoptosis can simultaneously bring many advantages when fighting against viral infection, which begs the question of how cells should choose between survival and death when they sense dsRNA. In fact, heterogeneity of dsRNA-induced apoptosis always exists in nature though it is often ignored in many previous experiments. In order to answer the question of what the sources of heterogeneity of dsRNA-induced apoptosis are, we gathered information and conclusions from previous studies and made several hypotheses. We suspected that heterogeneity of dsRNA-induced apoptosis is derived from different level of Interferon production or different cell phase. We further designed corresponding cell lines and experiments to test our hypotheses.