{"doi":"10.1101/2022.07.06.498920","title":"Co-opted Genes of Algal Origin Protect <i>C. elegans</i> against Cyanogenic Toxins","abstract":"SUMMARY Amygdalin is a cyanogenic glycoside widely used by many plants in herbivore defense. Poisonous to most animals, amygdalin-derived cyanide is detoxified by potent enzymes commonly found in bacteria and plants but not most animals. Here we show that the nematode C. elegans can detoxify amygdalin by a genetic pathway comprising cysl-1, egl-9, hif-1 and cysl-2 . Essential for amygdalin resistance, cysl-1 encodes a protein similar to cysteine synthetic enzymes in bacteria and plants, but functionally co-opted in C. elegans . We identify exclusively HIF-activating egl-9 mutations in a cysl-1 suppressor screen and show that cysl-1 confers amygdalin resistance by regulating HIF-1-dependent cysl-2 transcription to protect against amygdalin toxicity. Phylogenetic analysis suggests cysl-1 and cysl-2 were likely acquired from green algae through horizontal gene transfer (HGT) and functionally co-opted in protection against amygdalin. Our studies reveal that HGT-mediated evolutionary changes can facilitate host survival and adaptation to adverse environment stresses and biogenic toxins.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2022,"id":309713,"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":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9574,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":871103,"name":"Taruna Pandey","orcid":"0000-0001-7278-6434","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":871104,"name":"Yong Long","orcid":"0000-0001-6439-0181","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":897653,"name":"Sofia E. Delgado-Rodriguez","orcid":"0000-0002-7906-6306","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":555507,"name":"Matthew D. Daugherty","orcid":"0000-0002-4879-9603","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":142695,"name":"Dengke K. Ma","orcid":"0000-0002-5619-7485","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":577094,"name":"Bingying Wang","orcid":"0000-0001-7362-7371","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":52,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:33:15.860993Z","pmid":null,"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":[]}