You will be shown biomedical passages and your task is to the answer the provided question. Provide a concise and accurate response and do not include any additional text in the response other than the answer.

Question: What is the function of the cGAS pathway?

Context: Cyclic di-AMP (c-di-AMP) is a bacterial signaling nucleotide synthesized by several human pathogens.
Cyclic GMP-AMP synthase (cGAS) has recently been identified as the primary protein that detects cytosolic double stranded DNA to invoke a type I interferon response. The cGAS pathway is vital in the recognition of DNA encoded viruses as well as self-DNA leaked from the nucleus of damaged cells.
These results indicate that activation of the cGAS pathway is important for intrinsic antitumor immunity and that cGAMP may be used directly for cancer immunotherapy.
this work identifies long DNA as the molecular entity stimulating the cGAS pathway upon cytosolic DNA challenge such as viral infections.
these data suggest that inactivation of the cGAS pathway plays a critical role in tumour progression, and reveal a direct link between hypoxia-responsive miRNAs and adaptive immune responses to the hypoxic tumour microenvironment, thus unveiling potential new therapeutic strategies.
dysregulation of the cGAS pathway is linked to autoimmune diseases while targeted stimulation may be of benefit in immunoncology.
The cGAS-STING pathway not only mediates protective immune defense against infection by a large variety of DNA-containing pathogens but also detects tumor-derived DNA and generates intrinsic antitumor immunity.
our data indicate that the cGAS-STING pathway plays a role in the surveillance of HBV infection and may be exploited for development of novel anti-HBV strategies.
Immune defense