Musacchio A (2015) Elife "Closing the Mad2 cycle."

Musacchio A

[Elife, 2015]

Chromosome separation is regulated by a cycle that involves a protein undergoing an unusual topological conversion.

Ringstad N (2017) Curr Biol "Neuromodulation: The Fevered Mind of the Worm."

Ringstad N

[Curr Biol, 2017]

A landmark study has revealed that an interleukin-17-like signaling system modulates a neural circuit that controls the aggregation behavior of nematodes.

Ringstad N (2014) Elife "Fatal attraction."

Ringstad N

[Elife, 2014]

A beetle pheromone that lures nematode worms to an insect host can also stop their development or even kill them outright.

Rechavi O (2020) Curr Biol "Transgenerational Inheritance: That Pathogen Gut Feeling."

Rechavi O

[Curr Biol, 2020]

Recognizing and remembering dangerous pathogens is of the utmost importance for an animal's survival. Nematodes use a digested bacterial small RNA molecule as a cue of pathogenicity. Inheritance of this RNA even protects the progeny from infection.

Signore IA et al. (2014) Curr Biol "Genetics: a common origin for neuronal asymmetries?"

Signore IA, Concha ML

[Curr Biol, 2014]

A new study reveals an unexpected genetic link between two distinct types of neuronal asymmetries in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. This finding suggests a common origin of genetically determined asymmetries and raises intriguing questions about their evolution.

Kristan WB (2015) Cell "Pinning down randomness."

Kristan WB

[Cell, 2015]

While some behavioral responses to a stimulus are invariant in animals, most are more likely to be variable or stochastic. In this issue, Gordus et al. illuminate a set of combinatorial neuronal activities that control the variability of a chemotactic behavior in response to an odor, providing a tractable system for understanding how stochastic circuit dynamics affect behavior.

Aguirre-Chen C et al. (2014) Elife "Cell death machinery makes life more robust."

Hammell CM, Aguirre-Chen C

[Elife, 2014]

CED-3, a protein that is essential for programmed cell death, also has an unexpected role in the regulation of non-apoptotic genes during normal development.

Zhang D et al. (2015) Curr Biol "Cytokinesis: Placing the Furrow in Context."

Zhang D, Glotzer M

[Curr Biol, 2015]

A Caenorhabditis elegans mutant has been identified in which an ectopic myosin cap shifts the cleavage furrow relative to the spindle center. Surprisingly, the molecules that suppress this cap in wild-type embryos generate a cap in other asymmetrically dividing cells.

Gardner MK et al. (2006) Curr Biol "Asymmetric division: motor persistence pays off."

Odde DJ, Gardner MK

[Curr Biol, 2006]

A new study shows that an antagonistic force model can explain a number of complex mitotic spindle movements in the first mitosis of the Caenorhabditis elegans embryo by simply assuming that cortical force generators become increasingly persistent in their interaction with microtubules during mitosis.

Howell K et al. (2016) Neuron "Small Immunoglobulin Domain Proteins at Synapses and the Maintenance of Neuronal Features."

Hobert O, Howell K

[Neuron, 2016]

The integrity of neural circuits must be maintained throughout the lifetime of an organism. In this issue of Neuron, Cherra and Jin (2016) characterize a small, two-Ig domain protein, ZIG-10, and its role in maintaining synaptic density in a specific set of C.elegans neurons.