Another paper from our awesome lab out today @nature.com. Led by 🌟 PD Jihye Yeon with fantastic collaborators. We show how an ionotropic receptor (related to insect sensory IRs) in a single pharyngeal enteric neuron senses ingested salts and protects the worm from high salt stress. rdcu.be/fbd4a

The first paper from the lab is now out in Science Advances: Multimodal social context modulates larval behavior in Drosophila www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... We find that fly larvae keep their distance to conspecifics in the absence of food, enjoy reading! @cbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de

How does evolution turn a harmless bacterial feeder into an active predator? Our new study led by @marianneroca.bsky.social and published in @pnas.org explores how sensory systems were rewired to enable prey detection and predatory behaviour in nematodes. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧵below!

Evolution of sensory systems underlies the emergence of predatory feeding behaviors in nematodes | PNAS

Understanding how animal behavior evolves remains a major challenge, with few studies linking genetic changes to differences in neural function and...

pnas.org

How do new behaviors evolve? A new Nature study shows how predatory aggression can emerge through changes in neuromodulatory circuits – without adding new neurons. We’ve created a short animated explainer video to walk through the key ideas. youtu.be/wNhjKDCPs_8?...

How new behaviors evolve: from peaceful worm to predator

YouTube video by MPINB

youtu.be

Why do some worms graze on bacteria while others hunt and kill? Our study, published today in Nature, reveals how predatory aggression evolved in nematodes. Led by @gunizgozeeren.bsky.social and @leoboeger.bsky.social across the @jameslightfoot.bsky.social and @monikakscholz.bsky.social labs.

Predatory aggression evolved through adaptations to noradrenergic circuits - Nature

Noradrenergic circuits support and balance aggressive behavioural states in predatory nematodes, distinguish predatory from non-predatory nematode species and are associated with the evolution of comp...

nature.com

Curious about how the cannibalistic nematode Pristionchus pacificus hunts its prey? Check out our preprint on BioRxiv, where we explore the roles of mechanosensation and chemosensation, using behaviour tracking among other methods! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Two weeks to go until @jameslightfoot.bsky.social lab and I will host some excellent colleagues from around the world at the NWG meeting in Göttingen for Symposium 24@neurowissg.bsky.social! Be ready for a diverse line up with 🐸 🕷️ 🪱 🪰 under the common umbrella of 'evolution of behavior'!

Fantastic work from the lab of @maxplanck.de colleague Paul Rainey, demonstrating how a locus can evolve to become hypermutable. Mutation rates depend on evolutionary relevance of this evolved locus! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Have you ever wondered what is on the surface of a #nematode like #Celegans? …it turns out they are surprisingly greasy little critters and covered in many different lipids. To read more about this, check out the excellent paper from the Chauhan lab which we were very happy to be a small part of.

Veeren Chauhan@veerenchauhan.com · last yr.

New publication in JACS! 🔬🐍 "Surface Lipids in Nematodes are Influenced by Development and Species-specific Adaptations" 📖 doi.org/10.1021/jacs... Supported by @uniofnottingham.bsky.social, EPSRC and @ukri.org, @maxplanck.de and @dfg.de

How hard do bacteria-eating nematodes bite in order to break the bacterial cell wall? Check out our new paper, led by Jason Casar & collab with Jen Dionne, using pressure sensing beads that change color upon compression (bluetorial coming soon) rdcu.be/d5n7v

Upconverting microgauges reveal intraluminal force dynamics in vivo

Nature - Nanoparticle-based ‘microgauges’ are developed for in vivo force sensing and deployed in C. elegans to investigate how mechanical force correlates with electrical signalling in...

rdcu.be

Institute Christmas party shenanigans 🪱🥳

Are you planning to perform single-copy insertions in C. elegans??? Check out our first lab paper!! 🥳 Our *Universal SKI System* uses just one plasmid that can be inserted into any chromosome! Easy peasy! #Celegans #CRISPR #worms #research #science #techniques www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

CGC1, a new reference genome for Caenorhabditis elegans https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.04.626850v1

Molecular patterns of evolutionary changes throughout the whole nervous system of multiple nematode species https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.23.624988v1

Molecular patterns of evolutionary changes throughout the whole nervous system of multiple nematode species https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.23.624988v1

One avenue to better understand brain evolution is to map molecular patterns of evolutionary changes

biorxiv.org

Evolutionary plasticity in nematode Hox gene complements and genomic loci arrangement www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Evolutionary plasticity in nematode Hox gene complements and genomic loci arrangement - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Evolutionary plasticity in nematode Hox gene complements and genomic loci arrangement

nature.com

Another fantastic Pristionchus paper, this time from the Yoshida and Sommer labs highlighting the rapid sex chromosome evolution in these nematodes. This includes the evolution of five distinct karyotypes across the Pristionchus genus. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Rapid chromosome evolution and acquisition of thermosensitive stochastic sex determination in nematode androdioecious hermaphrodites - Nature Communications

Sexual systems evolve frequently in nematodes. Through large-scale genomic analyses, Yoshida et al. find rapid chromosome evolution, sex chromosome turnover and acquisition of stochastic sex determina...

nature.com

🧪 Lab's latest!! Work by PD (and now PI) Alison Philbrook. C. elegans sensory neurons have gorgeous #cilia. We’ve always thought that a) no cilia = no sensory responses, & b) no IFT = no cilia. Punchline is we thought wrong. Read paper for more! #neuroscience journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Cilia structure and intraflagellar transport differentially regulate sensory response dynamics within and between C. elegans chemosensory neurons

The relative contributions of intraflagellar transport (IFT) and cilia structure to sensory neuron responses remains unclear. This study reveals unexpected complexity in the contribution of IFT and ci...

journals.plos.org

While Pristionchus pacificus is our main species of interest, there are many amazing Pristionchus out there. Thanks to work from Matthias Herrmann, two more species have been discovered in South Korea bringing the number of Pristionchus to 50 including 8 hermaphrodites! sciendo.com/article/10.2...

Description of two new Pristionchus species from South Korea

Based on molecular markers, mating experiments, morphological observations and ecological data, two Pristionchus species...

sciendo.com

Thank you very much for the invite and to everyone who came to listen to my talk @biozentrum.bsky.social! I thoroughly enjoyed hearing about the amazing science taking place and the opportunity to meet so many enthusiastic scientists. Special thanks for the invite from Susan Mango! 🪱

Vvvvvvvvvvery excited to have James Lightfoot @jameslightfoot.bsky.social today at the @biozentrum.bsky.social. Predation, worms, evolution, explosions, the whole shebang

Great Pristionchus pacificus paper by the Okumura lab. They investigate its light avoidance behaviour and show some key differences compared to how this functions and has evolved compared to C. elegans! journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

cGMP-dependent pathway and a GPCR kinase are required for photoresponse in the nematode Pristionchus pacificus

Author summary Nematodes are a highly diverse group of animals found in a wide variety of habitats and sensory systems. In particular, light-induced behavior has been found to differ among species. Th...

journals.plos.org