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2023 International C. elegans conference in Glasgow
The 24th C. elegans international conference will be held this year June 24-28 in Glasgow (Scotland). It is the first time the event is being organized outside of the United States. Both in-person and virtual attending options will be provided.
See the website for more details: https://genetics-gsa.org/celegans2023/
Back in action
The briggsae.org site is now up and running.
We are live (almost!)
The briggsae.org website is finally back on track after almost one and half years!
The site went down after changing the service provider. The problem was with database backup that wasn’t working when imported to a new account. It took considerable time and efforts to fix the issue. Currently, the site is being served from a subdirectory of our lab website (www.macwormlab.net). We hope to restore the original site soon.
let-7 microRNA absent in many Caenorhabditis nematodes
A recent paper by Nelson and Ambros [1] reports that let-7 heterochronic microRNA is absent in Caenorhabditis species of the japonica group. Research in C. elegans has shown that let-7 plays an essential role during larval to adult transition and mutations in let-7 cause lethality. Authors used one species of the japonica group, C. sulstoni, to further investigate microRNA gene regulatory network. The results revealed that the loss of let-7 function in this species is compensated by other let-7 family members, i.e., miR-48, miR- 84, and miR-241.
Considering that let-7 is highly conserved across bilaterians [2], the results presented in this paper are exciting. However, more work is needed to understand the basis of such an evolutionary change and other potential changes in microRNA-mediated processes.
Reference:
1. Nelson C. and Ambros V. (2021). A cohort of Caenorhabditis species lacking the highly conserved let-7 microRNA. G3, 11(3), jkab022. DOI: 10.1093/g3journal/jkab022.
2. Pasquinelli A.E. et al. (2000). Conservation of the sequence and temporal expression of let-7 heterochronic regulatory RNA. Nature. 408:86–89.
Control of life-history trade-off by cis-regulatory mutation in eak-3
A new paper by Billard et al. (DOI: j.cub.2020.08.004) reports that a 92-bp deletion in eak-3 alters steroid hormone dafachronic acid (DA) signaling in C. elegans resulting in increased environmental sensitivity for dauer induction and delayed reproductive growth. The findings reveal the genetic basis of choice between somatic maintenance and reproductive growth in response to environmental variation.
Billard, B., Vigne, P. & Braendle, C. A. (2020). Natural Mutational Event Uncovers a Life History Trade-Off via Hormonal Pleiotropy. Curr Biol, vol. 30, 1–13, November 2, 2020.