The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has a simple nervous system with glia restricted primarily to sensory organs. Some of the activities that would be provided by glia in the mammalian nervous system are either absent or provided by non-glial cell types in C. elegans, with only a select set of mammalian glial activities being similarly provided by specialized glial cells in this animal. These o...

The DAF-9 cytochrome P450 is a key regulator of dauer formation, developmental timing and longevity in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Here we describe the first identified chemical inhibitor of DAF-9 and the first reported small-molecule tool that robustly induces dauer formation in typical culture conditions. This molecule (called dafadine) also inhibits the mammalian ortholog of DAF-9(C...

The nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, has been used to develop a facile model system of host-pathogen interactions to identify basic evolutionarily conserved pathways associated with microbial pathogenesis. The model involves the killing of Caenorhabditis elegans by a variety of human pathogens. Several virulence-related genes in a variety of pathogens previously shown to be involved in ma...

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors selection papers published in Biology Open, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Julia Loose author on ‘ Auxin treatment increases lifespan Caenorhabditis elegans’, BiO. PhD student lab Arjumand Ghazi, at University Pittsburgh Rangos Research Center, Pittsburgh, USA, investigating relat...

Abstract Sleep is a vital behavioral and physiological state. It controlled by conserved genes neuronal circuit mechanisms. In the round worm Caenorhabditis elegans , one single neuron called RIS essential for sleep. During sleep, activates to shut down behavior support survival. Here, we summarize how stress leads activation of signaling through immunity longevity pathways becomes crucial surv...

The 97-megabase genomic sequence of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans reveals over 19,000 genes. More than 40 percent of the predicted protein products find significant matches in other organisms. There is a variety of repeated sequences, both local and dispersed. The distinctive distribution of some repeats and highly conserved genes provides evidence for a regional organization of the chrom...

Nowadays, in the Internet databases era, certain knowledge is being progressively lost. This knowledge, which we feel is essential and should be acquired through education, is the understanding of how the pioneer researchers faced major questions in their field and made their discoveries.

Overview The value of Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism for biomedical research is unquestioned. The interpretation of its 100.2 Mb complete genome sequence has been enhanced by a high quality, 98% complete draft genome sequence for Caenorhabditis briggsae. However, comparison of any two species is not sufficient to define many sequence features, since features evolve at different rate...

Recently, pathogenicity models that involve the killing of the genetically tractable nematode Caenorhabditis elegans by human pathogens have been developed. From the perspective of the pathogen, the advantage of these models is that thousands of mutagenized bacterial clones can be individually screened for avirulent mutants on separate petri plates seeded with C. elegans. The advantages of usin...

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