Articles tagged C. elegans
(40 results)

When you catch a nasty cold, curling up in bed to sleep may be the only activity you can manage. Sleeping in response to stress isn’t a uniquely human behavior: many other animals have the same reaction, and it’s not clear why. While the circadian sleep that follows the pattern of the clock has been…

As night fell, astronomer Jean Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan watched a plant’s leaves, symmetrically arranged side-by-side on a stem, clamp shut. It was 1729, and he was studying the dramatic nocturnal movement of Mimosa pudica. Strangely, he found that the plant behaved the same way even when it wasn’t exposed to natural cycles of light…

Inheriting a trait from a grandparent doesn’t always involve their DNA sequences. In many organisms, some traits can be passed down for multiple generations via non-sequence based mechanisms, a phenomenon called transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. The most familiar example is that human disease risk might be influenced by the lifestyle of a person’s grandparents. But by…

For the past 20 years, Ahna Skop has organized the Worm Art Show at the 21st International C. elegans Conference. These are the winners from #Worm17, which was held in June 2017 at UCLA. Click on any image to view it full size. Best In Show “Do you expect me to talk?” Beata Mierzwa (BeataScienceArt.com), Oegema and Desai Lab…

For people with alcohol dependence, withdrawal symptoms can cause relapse. Some physical symptoms—such as seizures, delirium tremens, and heart rhythm abnormalities—can be fatal, but even non-life-threatening symptoms like anxiety and confusion can trigger relapse. The changes in the nervous system that underlie withdrawal symptoms may involve ion channels in the Slo family. The function of…

In critical situations, communication can mean the difference between life and death. If our house goes up in flames, we don’t need to smell smoke to be alarmed as long as someone yells, “Fire!” This isn’t unique to humans; even creatures with much less sophisticated means of sharing information have ways of telling each other…

Changing where the polyA tail is added to an mRNA transcript can fine-tune the tissue-specific expression of many genes, reports a Caenorhabditis elegans study published in the June issue of GENETICS. Blazie et al. show alternative polyadenylation (APA) allows transcripts to evade microRNA (miRNA) silencing in some tissues, allowing for tissue-specific expression of those genes.…

Strong muscles aren’t important only for athletes—declining skeletal muscle strength is strongly associated with lower quality of life and even mortality in older adults. As the world’s population ages, understanding why muscle strength decreases over our lifespans is critical to ensuring seniors enjoy a happy, healthy old age. Normally, a muscle contracts when calcium is…

In 1997, Ahna Skop approached her graduate advisor, John G. White, about adding a worm-themed art show to the International C. elegans Conference he was organizing that year. “He said I could do whatever I wanted, but not to involve him,” she recalls. That year marked the very first Worm Art Show, which has since…

We are pleased to announce that Jonathan Hodgkin, PhD is the 2017 recipient of the Edward Novitski Prize in recognition of his extraordinary creativity and intellectual ingenuity in solving significant problems in genetics research. Hodgkin uncovered the sex determination pathway in Caenorhabditis elegans, an important and widely used model for animal development and genetics. His…

Off the coast of North America drifts a jellyfish that has unknowingly revolutionized molecular biology. Aequorea victoria produces green fluorescent protein (GFP), a substance that adds a green tinge to the jelly’s bioluminescence, which can sometimes be seen around its margins. By inserting a slightly modified version of the GFP gene into the genomes of…