Researchers find out protein that adjusts gene interest to healthy nutrient stages in roundworms

Overview

• Post By : Kumar Jeetendra


• Source: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory


• Date: 23 Dec,2020

Changing a fertilized egg into a fully functional adult is a complicated endeavor. Cells must split, move, and mature at specific times. Developmental genes control that process, turning on and off at a choreographed way.

However, the environment affects development.

They discovered a master switch developing worms use to pause growth when nutrients are scarce. When the environment improves, animals continue developing. The switch adjusts gene action to match nutrient amounts.

Caenorhabditis elegans is a small roundworm. In a lab, this worm develops from an embryo to a 959-cell adult in around three days. Hammell says:

This always happens the same way. You always get 959 cells, and the patterns of those divisions that give you those cells are always done in the same manner between one animal and the next.”

Christopher Hammell, Associate Professor, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

The genes that guide this flexible program switch on and off in predictable patterns as an embryo morphs through several larval stages into a fully formed worm.

In the wild, developing worms can’t always depend on comfortable temperatures and plentiful food. Hammell’s team found a protein known as BLMP-1 that adjusts gene activity (transcription) to keep pace with growth.

When conditions are good, BLMP-1 levels increase and unravel stretches of DNA, so genes are more accessible. Activators then switch on the genes at the right time.

“This is an anticipatory mechanism to say’everything’s okay, make development as robust as possible,'” Hammell explains. If conditions aren’t optimal, BLMP-1 levels go down, leaving genes packaged closely away, slowing or even stopping development.

Hammell states that was a surprise since his team initially set out to investigate this process in only a handful of developmental genes. BLMP-1 is exceptional in that it coordinates many diverse kinds of processes.

Hammell isn’t the first researcher to call attention to BLMP-1. Hammell is optimistic that BLMP-1 in C. elegans will offer a model system to study human diseases.