The C. elegans LIM homeobox gene lin-11 specifies multiple cell fates during vulval development

LIM homeobox family members regulate a variety of cell fate choices during animal development. In C. elegans, mutations in the LIM homeobox gene lin-11 have previously been shown to alter the cell division pattern of a subset of the 2° lineage vulval cells. We demonstrate multiple functions of lin-11 during vulval development. We examined the fate of vulval cells in lin-11 mutant animals using five cellular markers and found that lin-11 is necessary for the patterning of both 1° and 2° lineage cells. In the absence of lin-11 function, vulval cells fail to acquire correct identity and inappropriately fuse with each other. The expression pattern of lin-11 reveals dynamic changes during development. Using a temporally controlled overexpression system, we show that lin-11 is initially required in vulval cells for establishing the correct invagination pattern. This process involves asymmetric expression of lin-11 in the 2° lineage cells. Using a conditional RNAi approach, we show that lin-11 regulates vulval morphogenesis. Finally, we show that LDB-1, a NLI/Ldb1/CLIM2 family member, interacts physically with LIN-11, and is necessary for vulval morphogenesis. Together, these findings demonstrate that temporal regulation of lin-11 is crucial for the wild-type vulval patterning

Origin of the anomalous long lifetime of 14C

We report the microscopic origins of the anomalously suppressed beta decay of 14C to 14N using the ab initio no-core shell model (NCSM) with the Hamiltonian from chiral effective field theory (EFT) including three-nucleon force (3NF) terms. The 3NF induces unexpectedly large cancellations within the p-shell between contributions to beta decay, which reduce the traditionally large contributions from the NN interactions by an order of magnitude, leading to the long lifetime of 14C.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures and 2 table

The draft genome sequence of the nematode Caenorhabditis briggsae, a companion to C. elegans

The publication of the draft genome sequence of Caenorhabditis briggsae improves the annotation of the genome of its close relative Caenorhabditis elegans and will facilitate comparative genomics and the study of the evolutionary changes during development

Morphogenesis of the vulva and the vulval-uterine connection

The C. elegans hermaphrodite vulva is an established model system to study mechanisms of cell fate specification and tissue morphogenesis. The adult vulva is a tubular shaped organ composed of seven concentric toroids that arise from selective fusion between differentiated vulval progeny. The dorsal end of the vulval tubule is connected to the uterus via a multinucleate syncytium utse (uterine-seam) cell. The vulval tubule and utse are formed as a result of changes in morphogenetic processes such as cell polarity, adhesion, and invagination. A number of genes controlling these processes are conserved all the way up to human and function in similar developmental contexts. This makes it possible to extend the findings to other metazoan systems. Gene expression studies in the vulval and uterine cells have revealed the presence of regulatory networks specifying distinct cell fates. Thus, these two cell types serve as a good system to understand how gene networks confer unique cell identities both experimentally and computationally. This chapter focuses on morphogenetic processes during the formation of the vulva and its connection to uterus

Reconstruction of a Genetic Pathway Using Transcriptome Mapping in a Metazoan

RNA‐seq is a technique that is commonly used to identify downstream elements to a genetic or chemical perturbation. In theory, global transcriptomes contain enough information to perform a full‐fledged genetic analysis of a pathway. Early attempts to do this using microarrays in single celled organisms reported partial reconstruction of a genetic pathway. Using the hypoxia pathway, we show that genetic reconstructions can be performed using global transcriptome data. We obtained the transcriptomes of 5 C. elegans single mutants and 2 double mutants at the young adult stage. We show that in a blinded computational study, we were able to identify relevant genetic relationships between all genes in a pathway. In addition, we identified a core set of ~500 genes that make up the bulk of the C. elegans hypoxia response. Multiple of these genes are directly implicated in the Electron Transport Chain (ETC), metabolism regulation or chemical damage responses