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[
Science,
1997]
A gene that helps control the life-span of the nematode C. elegans encodes the worm version of the insulin receptor, thereby providing a possible link between aging and glucose metabolism.
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[
Nature,
1996]
Classical results in experimental embryology established long ago that cells of the developing animal have a regional identity. They can be characterized not only as 'skin', 'nerve' and 'bone', but also as 'arm' and 'leg'. But how cells know what body region they belong to, and what to do there, is not known. Results reported in this issue and in Development describe unexpected properties of a key player, one of the Hox genes-the dynamic, lineage-based regulation of a Hox gene in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is at odds with a traditional view of Hox genes as relatively fixed markers of regional identity.
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Nat Methods,
2011]
Engineering precise genetic changes in a genome is powerful way to study gene function, and several recent papers describe new applications of gene-editing tools. Working with researchers at Sangamo BioSciences, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Barbara Meyer and her colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, described the first systems for making targeted genomic modifications in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, a valuable model organism (Wood et al., 2011).
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[
Nature,
1993]
Twenty years ago Sydney Brenner described an electrode-less plan for attacking the problems of neural development and physiology in the small nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. He proposed to set the groundwork by reconstructing the entire nervous system of the worm by serial section electron microscopy. Given the resulting wiring diagram, he thought it might be possible to make guesses as to how the nervous system worked. A second aspect of his plan was genetics: single-gene mutants exhibiting aberrant behaviour, such as uncoordinated movement, were to be analysed to address the question of how genes specify development and function of the nervous system. In two papers beginning on page 334 of this issue, McIntire et al. demonstrate that work on Brenner's plan, with a few tricks added over the years, is progressing very nicely.
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[
Genes Dev,
2016]
Nucleotides are required in order to replicate DNA in the developing germline. Here, Chi and colleagues (pp. 307-320) have used Caernohabditis elegans to identify a GLP-1-dependent checkpoint that senses food (bacterially)-supplied nucleotide levels, arresting reproductive development in the absence of sufficient nucleotide supplies.