The worm turns and delivers

The worm turns on Helicobacter pylori.

How the Worm Turns, in Molecular Detail

Any behavior is, at its most elemental level, a coordinated series of muscle contractions. Those contractions are triggered by motor neurons, whose firing is controlled by other neurons, both excitatory and inhibitory, the whole chain set in motion by a stimulus. While the outlines of such a simple behavioral circuit have been understood for decades, the details— in particular, which neurotrans...

Muscular dystrophy: The worm turns to genetic disease

A new animal model for studying muscular dystrophy, a mutant form of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, brings the power of worm genetics to bear on the search for a cure for this disease; work on this worm has already led to the identification of a novel component that can suppress the mutant phenotype.

The CMMISM Project Delivers

Kinesin Delivers

What is it about movement in cells that commands our atten-tion? What biologist has not enjoyed turning a microscope on a cell, almost any cell, really, and watching all the commo-tion? When vesicles, mitochondria, chloroplasts, nuclei, or chromosomes move, we are being treated to an elegant, easily observable manifestation of molecular events. Decades of effort to understand intracellular move...