[
Biochim Biophys Acta Mol Cell Res,
2022]
The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a widely used research model for the investigation of metabolism, aging and age-associated diseases. However, when investigating the impact of natural compounds or drugs on those topics, a major confounder is the metabolism of these test substances by live E. coli bacteria, the standard food source of C. elegans. Using paraformaldehyde instead of heat to inactivate E. coli, which allows for high-throughput technologies and better food availability, it is shown here that RNA-interference works equally well, thus demonstrating the absence of considerable interfering modifications of paraformaldehyde with nucleic acids.
[
Science,
1977]
At a recent conference in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, investigators met to discuss the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. This free-living worm may, according to some workers, become the Escherichia coli or at least the bacteriophage T4 of the animal world. Small (about 1mm in length) and semitransparent, C. elegans provides for research the advantages of a short life cycle (3 days) and a simple anatomy-it contains about 810 nongonadal nuclei. It is both easy to cultivate, on E. coli as a food source, and convenient for genetic analysis. Its genes are carried on five autosomes and a sex chromosome (X), and it has a genome size about 20 times that of E. coli. It generally reproduces as a self-fertilizing hermaphrodite (XX), but occasional males (XO), which arise by nondisjunction, permit sexual reproduction as well....
[
J Biomol NMR,
2004]
The Northeast Structural Genomics Consortium (NESG) is a pilot project designed to evaluate the feasibility and value of structural genomics. The 21 kDa Caenorhabditis elegans protein coded by gene CE32E8.3 (TrEMBL protein P91127, referred to here as WR33) is one of several hundred targets identified for structural analysis by the Northeast Structural Genomics Consortium (www.nesg.org). WR33 belongs to a large protein domain family with homologues in several eukaryotic genomes, including those of Homo sapiens (TrEMBL proteins Q9Y326, O94811, and Q9Y6H0), Mus musculis (TrEMBL protein Q9CRB6), and Drosophila melanogaster (TrEMBL protein Q(VV43). The 25 kDa Bos Taurus (bovine) homologue from this family (Q27957), with 38% sequence identity with WR33 over 175 residues, is characterized as 'brain specific protein P25' (Shiratsuchi et al., 1995) and is expressed in oligodendrocytes and neutrophils of bovine brain tissue. However, none of the members of this strongly conserved protein domain family has a characterized biological function.