Malathi Krishnamurthy, PhD

Regulation of autophagy and cell death pathways

Activation of RNase L induces autophagy involving the activities of dsRNA-dependent protein kinase R (PKR) and c-jun N-terminal kinase (JNK). The regulation of autophagy and innate immunity to viral infections appears to involve overlapping signaling pathways and autophagy-related proteins, which can have both proviral and antiviral effects. It is not clear how these two pathways interact and how the activation of one might complicate the outcome of the other, i.e., could the induction of autophagy modulate innate immune responses to viral infection? Ongoing studies will determine the role of RNA signaling pathways in the crosstalk between autophagy and apoptosis during viral infections.