Genome maintenance defects cause complex disease phenotypes characterized by developmental failure, cancer susceptibility and premature ageing. It remains poorly understood how DNA damage responses function during organismal development and maintain tissue functionality when DNA damage accumulates with ageing. Here we show that the FOXO transcription factor DAF-16 is activated in response to DNA damage during development, whereas the DNA damage responsiveness of DAF-16 declines with ageing. We find that in contrast to its established role in mediating starvation arrest, DAF-16 alleviates DNA-damage-induced developmental arrest and even in the absence of DNA repair promotes developmental growth and enhances somatic tissue functionality. We demonstrate that the GATA transcription factor EGL-27 co-regulates DAF-16 target genes in response to DNA damage and together with DAF-16 promotes developmental growth. We propose that EGL-27/GATA activity specifies DAF-16-mediated DNA damage responses to enable developmental progression and to prolong tissue functioning when DNA damage persists.

DNA damage causally contributes to aging and age-related diseases. Mutations in nucleotide excision repair (NER) genes cause highly complex congenital syndromes characterized by growth retardation, cancer susceptibility, and accelerated aging in humans. Orthologous mutations in Caenorhabditis elegans lead to growth delay, genome instability, and accelerated functional decline, thus allowing investigation of the consequences of persistent DNA damage during development and aging in a simple metazoan model. Here, we conducted proteome, lipidome, and phosphoproteome analysis of NER-deficient animals in response to UV treatment to gain comprehensive insights into the full range of physiological adaptations to unrepaired DNA damage. We derive metabolic changes indicative of a tissue maintenance program and implicate an autophagy-mediated proteostatic response. We assign central roles for the insulin-, EGF-, and AMPK-like signaling pathways in orchestrating the adaptive response to DNA damage. Our results provide insights into the DNA damage responses in the organismal context.

Novel tetraplatinated metalloporphyrin-based photosensitizers (PSs) are reported, which show excellent phototoxic indexes (PIs) up to 5800 against HeLa cells, which is, to the best of our knowledge, the highest value reported for any porphyrin so far. Furthermore, ⁶⁷Zn isotope labelling allowed the determination of the ratio of zinc to platinum inside the cells using ICP-MS.

We report the first exocyclically metallated tetrapyridinoporphyrazine, [tetrakis-(trans-Pt(NH₃)₂Cl)-tetra(3,4-pyrido)porphyrazine-zinc(II)](NO₃)₄ (4), synthesized in a multistep synthesis starting from 3,4-pyridinedicarbonitrile (1). The synthetic procedure involved a platination reaction of the intermediate tetra(3,4-pyrido)porphyrazine-zinc(II) (2), whereby the zinc(II) enhanced the solubility of the intermediate enabling the platination reaction. A similar approach to synthesize [tetrakis-(trans-Pt(NH₃)₂Cl)-tetra(3,4-pyrido)porphyrazine](NO₃)₄ (5) failed due to the unsuitable solubility properties of the intermediate tetra(3,4-pyrido)porphyrazine (3). The final product 4 and the intermediates were characterized, the photochemical and photophysical properties were determined and the photocytotoxicities were investigated. We demonstrate that the platinated tetra-pyridinoporphyrazine 4 is a potential photosensitizer for photodynamic therapy (PDT).