Protein disulphide isomerase (PDI; EC 5.3.4.1) is a multifunctional polypeptide that is identical to the β subunit of prolyl 4-hydroxylases. We report here on the cloning and expression of the Caenorhabditis elegans PDI}β polypeptide and its isoform. The overall amino acid sequence identity and similarity between the processed human and C. elegans PDI}β polypeptides are 61% and 85% respectively...

The discovery of RNA interference (RNAi) in C. elegans has had a major impact on scientific research, led to the rapid development of RNAi tools and has inspired RNA-based therapeutics. Astonishingly, nematodes, planaria and many insects take up double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) from their environment to elicit RNAi; the biological function of this mechanism is unclear. Recently, the E. coli OxyS non...

The major virulence factor produced by the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is a pore‐forming toxin called crystal (Cry) toxin, which targets and kills insects and nematodes. To understand how this bacterial toxin interacts with its invertebrate hosts, a genetic screen in C. elegans for nematodes resistant to Bt toxin was carried out. Four of the five genes that mutated to toxin resistance...

The soil nematode Caenorhabditis Elegans (C. elegans) is the most investigated of all multicellular organisms. Since the proposal to use it as a model organism, a series of research projects have been undertaken, investigating various aspects of this organism. As a result, the complete cell lineage, neural circuitry, and various genes and their functions have been identified. The complete C. el...

The human opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain PA14 kills Caenorhabditis elegans. Using systematic mutagenesis of PA14 to identify mutants that fail to kill C. elegans and a C. elegans mutant that lacks P-glycoproteins, we identified phenazines, secreted P. aeruginosa pigments, as one of the mediators of killing. Analysis of C. elegans mutants with altered responses to oxidative...

Mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) are critical mediators of cellular responses to pathogens and are activated in response to infection, but investigation is difficult in multi-cell hosts due to developmental lethality of mutations. Mycobacterium marinum (Mm) is an established model for tuberculosis, a disease afflicting nearly one-third of the world's population. We found that Mm-infecte...

The decline in immune function with aging, known as immunosenescence, has been implicated in evolutionarily diverse species, but the underlying molecular mechanisms are not understood. During aging in Caenorhabditis elegans, intestinal tissue deterioration and the increased intestinal proliferation of bacteria are observed, but how innate immunity changes during C. elegans aging has not been de...

Most Caenorhabditis elegans studies have used laboratory Escherichia coli as diet and microbial environment. Here we characterize bacteria of C. elegans' natural habitats of rotting fruits and vegetation to provide greater context for its physiological responses. By the use of 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA)-based sequencing, we identified a large variety of bacteria in C. elegans habitats, with phyla...