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[
New York Times,
1991]
Through a microscope, they look like tiny crystal serpents, curving and slithering across the dish with an almost opiated languor, doubling back on themselves as though discovering their tails for the first time, or bumping up against a neighbor clumsily and then slowly recoiling. Beneath their translucent skin the pulsing muscle cells and nerve fibers are clearly visible, a sight so strange and so exquisite that it is hard to believe these creatures are common roundworms, found in gardens and compost heaps everywhere. And it is harder still to believe that such slippery squiggles of life are fast changing the face of fundamental biology.
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[
Curr Biol,
2001]
The degenerin/epithelial sodium channel (DEG/ ENaC) protein family includes related ion channel subunits from organisms ranging from the simple nematode Caenorhabditis elegans to humans. Members of this protein family have been implicated in functions as diverse as touch transduction and proprioception [1-4], pain sensation and maintenance of sodium balance [5].
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[
Nature,
2000]
We thought we knew what spectrin does. Is it not the elastic, membrane-bound protein that prevents red blood cells from rupturing as they circulate in the bloodstream? And does it not have the same supporting function in other cells? The second assumption has seldom been questioned over the past two decades, but has just been overturned by the power of experimental genetics, as described in three reports in the Journal of Cell Biology. The results may bear on human diseases such as muscular dystrophy.
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[
Nature,
1992]
Dissecting the sex life of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans has already provided surprises for biologists interested in life-history theory. In a report on page 456 of this issue, Van Voorhies throws another spanner in the works by demonstrating that the costs of producing sperm are not as negligible as we might have thought.
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[
Science,
1995]
Sex has lots of advantages, as the number of species that indulge in it shows. But it also poses a potentially lethal problem. Most species use distinct X and Y sex chromosomes to determine who develops as female and who as male-and the female generally has more copies of the X chromosome than the male. But the X chromosome contains many genes needed equally by males and females, threatening females with what could be a lethal excess of X-chromosome gene products-or males with an equally serious deficiency. Researchers have known for decades that humans and other sexually reproducing species survive because of a correcting mechanism known as "dosage compensation" that equalizes the expression of X-linked genes between the sexes. But only now are they beginning to figure out how
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[
Nature,
1993]
Myth and literature have given human immortality mixed reviews. There is, nonetheless, fairly general agreement that intimations of mortality, in the form of ageing or senescence, are regrettable and should be postponed as long as possible. On page 461 of this issue, Kenyon and co-workers report a mutation of the nematode worm Caenorahbditis elegans that more than doubles its healthy and fertile adult lifespan.
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[
Trends Cell Biol,
2001]
In vertebrates and higher eukaryotes such as Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster, microtubules are in each cell primarily nucleated and organized by the centrosome, which has as its center a pair of centrioles. In recent years, it has become clear that bipolar spindle assembly is possible without centrosomes, and it appears that the centrosome might be required for proper spindle positioning rather than for spindle assembly.
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[
Nature,
1996]
Classical results in experimental embryology established long ago that cells of the developing animal have a regional identity. They can be characterized not only as 'skin', 'nerve' and 'bone', but also as 'arm' and 'leg'. But how cells know what body region they belong to, and what to do there, is not known. Results reported in this issue and in Development describe unexpected properties of a key player, one of the Hox genes-the dynamic, lineage-based regulation of a Hox gene in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is at odds with a traditional view of Hox genes as relatively fixed markers of regional identity.
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[
Science,
2002]
The nematode worm known as Caenorhabditis elegans is not much to look at. Just a millimeter long and transparent to boot, it is almost invisible to the naked eye. But in biological research the tiny worm looms large, providing a model system for studying everything from embryonic development to aging. Now, three researchers who pioneered the use of C. elegans as a model organism have won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
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[
Nature,
1999]
Once, lifespan genetics was largely the domain of theorists, who tried to explain why an organism's genes so cavalierly allow individual somas to die. But a flood of papers on the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans has brought the subject into the realm of serious experimental analysis. The latest studies (1,2), including a report by Apfeld and Kenyon (1) on page 804 of this issue, indicate that the nervous system has a key function in regulating lifespan. Perhaps we are, indeed, only as old as we think