{"doi":"10.1016/j.cell.2024.11.026","title":"Perception of a pathogenic signature initiates intergenerational protection","abstract":"Transmission of immune responses from one generation to the next represents a powerful adaptive mechanism to protect an organism's descendants. Parental infection by the natural C. elegans pathogen Pseudomonas vranovensis induces a protective response in progeny, but the bacterial cues and intergenerational signal driving this response were previously unknown. Here, we find that animals activate a protective stress response program upon exposure to P. vranovensis-derived cyanide and that a metabolic byproduct of cyanide detoxification, β-cyanoalanine, acts as an intergenerational signal to protect progeny from infection. Remarkably, this mechanism does not require direct parental infection; rather, exposure to pathogen-derived volatiles is sufficient to enhance the survival of the next generation, indicating that parental surveillance of environmental cues can activate a protective intergenerational response. Therefore, the mere perception of a pathogen-derived toxin, in this case cyanide, can protect an animal's progeny from future pathogenic challenges.","journal":"Cell","year":2024,"id":434535,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":13,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9527,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":826530,"name":"Julian G. Dishart","orcid":"0000-0003-0014-6141","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":258498,"name":"Holly K. Gildea","orcid":"0000-0002-9549-890X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":933985,"name":"Kelsie M. Nauta","orcid":"0000-0002-4715-0634","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1241825,"name":"Emily M Page","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1000126,"name":"Talha F Siddiqi","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":893192,"name":"Shannon S. Cheung","orcid":"0000-0003-4181-4687","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":330440,"name":"Larry Joe","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1114876,"name":"Nicholas O. Burton","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":258501,"name":"Andrew Dillin","orcid":"0000-0002-7427-2629","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":340285,"name":"Corinne L. Pender","orcid":"0000-0001-7092-3079","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":97,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:59:58.582186Z","pmid":"39721586","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}