Stress and damage responses evolved from ancestral forms of life, where these provided organismal adaptation to environmental variation. These variations, often associated with infection, are sensed and reacted upon by a transcriptional stress and damage response network, encompassing the nuclear factor (erythroid-derived 2)-like 2 (NRF2).

This master transcriptional regulator of oxidative stress responses induces the expression of target genes that are essential to establish disease tolerance to malaria and sepsis.

Tolerancenetwork is aimed at identifying and characterizing NRF2-effector genes regulating glucose/energy metabolism and establishing disease tolerance to infection.