Bacterial avoidance and innate immune response are two ways by which C.elegans respond to pathogenic bacteria. In this issue of Developmental Cell, Kumar etal. (2019) and Singh and Aballay (2019) demonstrate that bacterial colonization is essential to induce both responses, which may be associated with somatic and reproductive longevity.
Recent work on a Caenorhabditis elegans transmembrane ATPase reveals a central role for the aminophospholipid phosphatidylethanolamine in the production of a class of extracellular vesicles.
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.
As a microtubule-organizing center, the centrosome undergoes a dramatic increase in size - via expansion of the pericentriolar material - during mitosis. Recent work reveals shared assembly properties of a protein scaffold that facilitates and supports this expansion, a process critical to spindle assembly.
Li et al. demonstrate that a single interneuron can regulate analog- and digital-like behaviors guided by two different postsynaptic neurons. Releasing a single neurotransmitter onto downstream neurons that express receptors with distinct biophysical properties enables a small set of neurons to direct a range of functional responses.
Screening a library of expressed cyclic peptides identified clones that reverse the cytotoxicity of alpha-synuclein in yeast and Caenorhabditis elegans. The results suggest a new approach for intervention in Parkinson's disease, and perhaps a druggable target.
A landmark study has revealed that an interleukin-17-like signaling system modulates a neural circuit that controls the aggregation behavior of nematodes.