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[
Aging Cell,
2002]
The papers by Van Voorhies in Free Radical Biology & Medicine (33, 587-596, 2002) and in this journal claim that the major longevity-extending mutations in C. elegans essentially act by reducing metabolic rate as predicted by the rate-of-living theory, and do not alter any metabolically independent mechanism specific to aging. In contrast, we found no evidence of a reduction in metabolic rate in these mutants using different experimental approaches. Now, Van Voorhies challenges the accuracy of our experimental results.
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PLoS Biol,
2022]
In this issue of PLOS Biology, van Rijnberk and colleagues show how polyploidy, via binucleation, enables Caenorhabditis elegans intestinal cells to ramp up gene expression supplying the oocytes with the necessary lipids for optimal organismal growth and reproductive fitness.
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[
Cell,
2015]
Throughout development, proliferative progenitors lose their mitotic potential, exit the cell cycle, and differentiate. In this issue, Ruijtenberg and van den Heuvel identify an important lineage-specific role for a SWI/SNF chromatin-remodeling complex that collaborates with core cell-cycle regulators to promote cell-cycle exit and terminal muscle cell differentiation.
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[
Nature,
1992]
Dissecting the sex life of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans has already provided surprises for biologists interested in life-history theory. In a report on page 456 of this issue, Van Voorhies throws another spanner in the works by demonstrating that the costs of producing sperm are not as negligible as we might have thought.
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[
Aging Cell,
2002]
The reviews by Braechman et al. and Van Voorhies in this issue of Aging Cell concur on the potential importance of metabolic rate and function to longevity in C. elegans. These reviews differ though, on their assessment of whether long-lived C. elegans mutants have a reduced metabolic rate compared to wild-type worms. At the centre of this disagreement are two main issues: the importance of measurement conditions when conducting metabolic assays on C. elegans, and which techniques are appropriate for measuring the metabolic rate of an organism and subsequent analysis of such data. These issues are interconnected; if the conditions under which an organism's metabolic rate are measured have a large impact on the resulting data, conclusions drawn from data collected from animals under different conditions may be invalid irrespective of the validity of the measurement methods. Conversely, measurement techniques which produce spurious data cannot be used to draw accurate conclusions about the metabolic rate of an organism, regardless of the conditions under which the organism was maintained.
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[
Nature,
1998]
Cytochrome c leads a double life. When a cell is called on to commit apoptotic suicide, cytochrome c relocalizes from the mitochondria to the cytosol. There, it helps to activate the foot-soldiers of apoptosis - the death proteases known as caspases. How cytochrome c escapes from the mitochondria is still a matter of debate, but it is clear that certain elements within the apoptotic regulatory hierarchy do not condone such behavior. In particular, overexpression of the cell-death suppressors Bcl-2 and Bcl-xL prevents the release of cytochrome c, suggesting that these proteins act upstream of cytochrome c in the pathway to death. However, on pages 449 and 496 of this issue, Zhivotovsky et al. and Rosse et al. show that Bcl-2 can also protect cells downstream of cytochrome c release, forcing a re-evaluation of this newly acquired dogma.
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Cell Host Microbe,
2009]
Similarities in innate immune signaling exist between mammals and the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Now, Ziegler et al. (2009) and Ren et al. (2009) demonstrate that a protein kinase C delta homolog in C. elegans is involved in innate immunity, providing evidence that the conservation of immune signaling networks extends further than previously thought.
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[
Science,
1998]
The near completion of the sequence of the C. elegans genome should provide researchers with a gold mine of information on topics ranging from evolution to gene
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[
Mol Cell,
2014]
In this issue of Molecular Cell, Hendriks et al. (2014) uncover extensive oscillations in global gene expression during C. elegans development, in synchrony with the molting cycle.
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[
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.