-
[
Physiol Genomics,
2003]
Life developed in a stressful environment. Stressors at the cellular level include heat, hypoxia, oxidative or reductive substances, mechanical or osmotic pressure, and toxic compounds like heavy metals. Various molecular pathways, more or less specific for the different stressors, developed during evolution to combat the molecular consequences of cell stress. Thermal stress induces the induction of a highly conserved protein family, the heat shock proteins (HSP).
-
[
Elife,
2014]
A beetle pheromone that lures nematode worms to an insect host can also stop their development or even kill them outright.
-
[
Dev Cell,
2015]
Recent advances suggest that phase transitions of proteins into liquid or hydrogel states could underlie pathological protein aggregation associated with neurodegenerative disease. In a recent issue of Neuron, Murakami et al. (2015) demonstrate that ALS-associated FUS mutations abrogate the reversibility of condensed liquids and/or hydrogels, leading to neurotoxicity in C. elegans.
-
[
Science,
1998]
Animals use apoptosis, or programmed cell death, to eliminate extraneous or dangerous cells. The muscle of this controlled cellular deconstruction is provided by the caspase family of cysteine proteases, which cleave key targets in the cell. Caspases normally exist in cells as inactive proenzymes; proteolytic processing at a few specific sites unleashes their latent enzymatic activity and triggers cell destruction.
-
[
Cell,
1995]
For many years developmental biologists have been trying to learn whether patterning within fields of cells is driven by graded morphogens or by sequential signaling cascades...
-
[
Nat Neurosci,
2001]
A characterization of C. elegans lacking the gene for Rim suggests that this protein may be involved in pruning synaptic vesicles for fusion, not in docking or organizing active zones.
-
[
Neuron,
2001]
Weighing in at about 5 ug, with 302 neurons and 5000 synapses, C. elegans is unlikely to prove theorems, write poetry, or challenge Mike Tyson. Still, remarkable behavioral complexity is packed into this tiny worm.
-
[
Nat Cell Biol,
2013]
Genome sequencing and RNAi have been powerful allies in the quest to assign function to every gene. Systematic RNAi screens identify essential genes efficiently, but are less effective with pleiotropic or redundant genes. A common trick used by geneticists to overcome this problem is to screen for genetic interactors - mutations that enhance or suppress the phenotype of a starting mutation. Now, this classic approach has been combined with the versatility of RNAi to generate an expanded gene network for cell polarity.
-
[
Curr Biol,
2011]
New work now shows that the dauer larvae of Caenorhabditis elegans can survive anhydrobiotically. The genetic tractability of this model organism may be useful in studying how organisms survive when losing most or all of their water.
-
[
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A,
2000]
The identification of drug targets for a given human disease, whether it is mainly environmental or genetic in origin, rests on an understanding of the molecular chain of events that unfold in the disease process. Anatomic pathology, biochemistry, cellular physiology, and pharmacology consitute the main traditional approaches towards identifying potential therapeutic targets...