Caenorhabditis elegans is a free-living transparent nematode about 1 mm in length that lives in temperate soil environments. It is the type species of its genus. The name is a blend of the Greek caeno- (recent), rhabditis (rod-like) and Latin elegans (elegant). In 1900, Maupas initially named it Rhabditides elegans. Osche placed it in the subgenus Caenorhabditis in 1952, and in 1955, Dougherty raised Caenorhabditis to the status of genus.
Howard Robert Horvitz ForMemRS NAS AAA&S APS NAM is an American biologist whose research on the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with Sydney Brenner and John E. Sulston, whose "seminal discoveries concerning the genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death" were "important for medical research and have shed new light on the pathogenesis of many diseases".
The Notch signaling pathway is a highly conserved cell signaling system present in most animals. Mammals possess four different notch receptors, referred to as NOTCH1, NOTCH2, NOTCH3, and NOTCH4. The notch receptor is a single-pass transmembrane receptor protein. It is a hetero-oligomer composed of a large extracellular portion, which associates in a calcium-dependent, non-covalent interaction with a smaller piece of the notch protein composed of a short extracellular region, a single transmembrane-pass, and a small intracellular region.
WormBook is an open access, comprehensive collection of original, peer-reviewed chapters covering topics related to the biology of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans . WormBook also includes WormMethods, an up-to-date collection of methods and protocols for C. elegans researchers.
An equivalence group is a set of unspecified cells that have the same developmental potential or ability to adopt various fates. Our current understanding suggests that equivalence groups are limited to cells of the same ancestry, also known as sibling cells. Often, cells of an equivalence group adopt different fates from one another.
Presenilins are a family of related multi-pass transmembrane proteins which constitute the catalytic subunits of the gamma-secretase intramembrane protease protein complex. They were first identified in screens for mutations causing early onset forms of familial Alzheimer's disease by Peter St George-Hyslop. Vertebrates have two presenilin genes, called PSEN1 that codes for presenilin 1 (PS-1) and PSEN2 that codes for presenilin 2 (PS-2). Both genes show conservation between species, with little difference between rat and human presenilins. The nematode worm C. elegans has two genes that resemble the presenilins and appear to be functionally similar, sel-12 and hop-1.
Apoptosis is the process of programmed cell death. From its early conceptual beginnings in the 1950s, it has exploded as an area of research within the life sciences community. As well as its implication in many diseases, it is an integral part of biological development.
In molecular biology lin-4 is a microRNA (miRNA) that was identified from a study of developmental timing in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. It was the first to be discovered of the miRNAs, a class of non-coding RNAs involved in gene regulation. miRNAs are transcribed as ~70 nucleotide precursors and subsequently processed by the Dicer enzyme to give a 21 nucleotide product. The extents of the hairpin precursors are not generally known and are estimated based on hairpin prediction. The products are thought to have regulatory roles through complete or partial complementarity to mRNA. The lin-4 gene has been found to lie within a 4.11kb intron of a separate host gene lho-1.
The Caenorhabditis eleganssel-12 gene encodes a multi-pass transmembrane domain protein that is similar to human presenilin. sel-12 positively regulates the lin-12 and glp-1 Notch signaling pathways during hermaphrodite gonadal, vulval, and germline development. sel-12 also plays a role in thermotaxis.
Cornelia Isabella "Cori" Bargmann is an American neurobiologist. She is known for her work on the genetic and neural circuit mechanisms of behavior using C. elegans, particularly the mechanisms of olfaction in the worm. She has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and had been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at UCSF and then Rockefeller University from 1995 to 2016. She was the Head of Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative from 2016 to 2022. In 2012 she was awarded the $1 million Kavli Prize, and in 2013 the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.
Cell death abnormality gene 9 (CED-9), also known as apoptosis regulator CED-9, is a gene found in Caenorhabditis elegans that inhibits/represses programmed cell death (apoptosis). The gene was discovered while searching for mutations in the apoptotic pathway after the discovery of the apoptosis promoting genes CED-3 and CED-4. The gene gives rise to the apoptosis regulator CED-9 protein found as an Integral membrane protein in the mitochondrial membrane. The protein is homologous to the human apoptotic regulator Bcl-2 as well as all other proteins in the Bcl-2 protein family. CED-9 is involved in the inhibition of CED-4 which is the activator of the CED-3 caspase. Because of the pathway homology with humans as well as the specific protein homology, CED-9 has been used to represent the human cell apoptosis interactions of Bcl-2 in research.
Victor R. Ambros is an American developmental biologist and Nobel Laureate who discovered the first known microRNA (miRNA). He is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He completed both his undergraduate and doctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ambros received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2024 for his research on microRNA.
Gary Bruce Ruvkun is an American molecular biologist and Nobel laureate at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Notch proteins are a family of type 1 transmembrane proteins that form a core component of the Notch signaling pathway, which is highly conserved in animals. The Notch extracellular domain mediates interactions with DSL family ligands, allowing it to participate in juxtacrine signaling. The Notch intracellular domain acts as a transcriptional activator when in complex with CSL family transcription factors. Members of this type 1 transmembrane protein family share several core structures, including an extracellular domain consisting of multiple epidermal growth factor (EGF)-like repeats and an intracellular domain transcriptional activation domain (TAD). Notch family members operate in a variety of different tissues and play a role in a variety of developmental processes by controlling cell fate decisions. Much of what is known about Notch function comes from studies done in Caenorhabditis elegans (C.elegans) and Drosophila melanogaster. Human homologs have also been identified, but details of Notch function and interactions with its ligands are not well known in this context.
DAF-16 is the sole ortholog of the FOXO family of transcription factors in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. It is responsible for activating genes involved in longevity, lipogenesis, heat shock survival and oxidative stress responses. It also protects C.elegans during food deprivation, causing it to transform into a hibernation - like state, known as a Dauer. DAF-16 is notable for being the primary transcription factor required for the profound lifespan extension observed upon mutation of the insulin-like receptor DAF-2. The gene has played a large role in research into longevity and the insulin signalling pathway as it is located in C. elegans, a successful ageing model organism.
Junying Yuan is the Elizabeth D. Hay Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School, best known for her work in cell death. Early in her career, she contributed significant findings to the discovery and characterization of apoptosis. More recently, she was responsible for the discovery of the programmed form of necrotic cell death known as necroptosis.
Abby F. Dernburg is a professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and a Faculty Senior Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Paul W. Sternberg is an American biologist. He does research for WormBase on C. elegans, a model organism.
Gary Struhl is an American research scientist whose primary areas of research are developmental biology and genetics and genomics. He works as a professor at Columbia University Medical Center, teaching neuroscience within the Department of Genetics and Development.
LIN-14 is a nuclear protein that plays a crucial role in regulating developmental timing in the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. It functions as a heterochronic gene, controlling the timing of developmental events during larval development. LIN-14 protein levels are high at the beginning of the first larval stage (L1) and then rapidly decline, which is essential for the transition from early to late cell fates. LIN-14 is a BEN domain transcription factor, capable of binding DNA and directly regulating gene expression. The protein's activity is tightly regulated by lin-4, a microRNA which inhibits LIN-14 protein synthesis through complementary base pairing with sequences in the lin-14 mRNA 3' untranslated region.
