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[
Science,
1994]
Like people, cells die in different ways: accident, murder, old age, even suicide. In fact, cellular suicide isn't just a curiosity, it's necessary for the health of the organism. During embryonic development, for example, it helps weed out superfluous nerve cells, as well as immune cells that might attack and damage the body's own tissues. Like a spy-plane pilot who carries a little vial of poison under his seat in case he's captured, cells carry in their nuclei a genetic program for suicide that can be set in motion, should the cell receive orders to self-destruct. Now, after years of eluding researchers, the genes that carry out the suicide program are coming into the light...
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[
Science,
1996]
Geoffrey Gold, a physiologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, had wanted for years to put to rest a nagging question: How do odors trigger olfactory neurons to fire off action potentials to the brain? The dogma for the past 5 years had been that odors fall into two catagories, each of which acts via a different inracellular messenger molecule. But Gold believed this view was wrong, and that all odors work by increasing the production of the intracellular messenger cyclic AMP (cAMP). One day last spring, Gold got a phone call out of the blue from neurobiologist John Ngai, at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, offering the possibility of answering this question. It was my dream come true," says Gold. ......
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[
Nat Cell Biol,
2011]
Aurora A kinase is a key regulator of cell division, whose functions were attributed to its ability to phosphorylate diverse substrates. Aurora A is now shown to have a kinase-independent role in the regulation of chromatin-mediated microtubule assembly.
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[
Nature,
1998]
Some species of the nematode worm (Caenorhabditis elegans) are sociable diners, clumping together to share a meal, yet others are more solitary. Why? According to a report by de Bono and Bargmann, these differences can be explained by a change of just one amino acid in a putative neuropeptide receptor.
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[
Nat Neurosci,
2003]
In C. elegans, social and solitary feeding behavior can be determined by a single amino acid change in a G protein-coupled receptor. A new study identifies ligands for this receptor and suggests how changes in behavior evolve at the molecular level.
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[
Nat Cell Biol,
2010]
Recognition of apoptotic cells by phagocytic cells in Caenorhabditis elegans has been something of a mystery. A secreted transthyretin-like protein, TTR-52, has been identified as a bridging molecule between apoptotic cells and CED-1 on the phagocytic cells that engulf them.
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[
Nature,
1992]
Induction is the process in development in which the fate of one cell mass is determined by another. A simple example occurs during vulval development in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans: a gonadal cell called the anchor cell induces three neighbouring cells to embark on a programme of cell division and morphogenesis, which culminates, in a few hours, in the formation of a vulva. On page 470 of this issue, Hill and Sternberg report strong evidence that they have identified the anchor-cell signalling molecule, which they find is a member of the EGF (epidermal growth factor) group of growth factors.
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[
Nature,
2003]
Understanding how we grow old is a long-sought goal. A new large-scale study of gene expression in worms allows us to glimpse the complex biochemistry of lifespan.
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[
New York Times,
1992]
The simple act of making sperm substantially shortens a male worm's life span, a researcher has discovered in results that overturn accepted biological dogma about the relative cheapness of a male's ejaculation compared with the preciousness of a female's egg. The scientist studying simple but revealing worms called nematodes found that males live much shorter lives than their mates, and he has traced that discrepancy to sperm production.
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[
Nat Neurosci,
2000]
A recent Nature paper on mice lacking the Na+ channel BNC1 shows that this channel is essential for neuronal touch receptor function and may be part of a mechanosensory complex.