Switching of the Relative Dominance Between Feedback Mechanisms in Lipopolysaccharide-Induced NF-kB Signaling

The bacterial product lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulates nuclear factor kB (NF-kB) signaling, which results in the production of proinflammatory cytokines, such as tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), as part of the immune response. NF-kB target genes also include those encoding proteins that inhibit NF-kB signaling through negative feedback loops. By simultaneously studying the dynamics of the nuclear translocation of the NF-kB subunit RelA and the activity of a Tnf-driven reporter in a mouse macrophage cell line, Sung et al. found that the gene encoding RelA was also a target of NF-kB. Synthesis of RelA occurred only at higher concentrations of LPS and constituted a positive feedback loop that dominated over existing negative feedback mechanisms. Genes expressed in response to a high concentration of LPS were enriched for those involved in innate immune responses. Together, these data suggest that the RelA-dependent positive feedback loop enables macrophages to mount an effective immune only above a critical concentration of LPS.

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Sung MH, Li N, Lao Q, Gottschalk RA, Hager GL, Fraser ID