In: Genetics, 2020, vol. 216, no. 4, p. 931–945
Differential gene expression across cell types underlies development and cell physiology in multicellular organisms. Caenorhabditis elegans is a powerful, extensively used model to address these biological questions. A remaining bottleneck relates to the difficulty to obtain comprehensive tissue-specific gene transcription data, since available methods are still challenging to execute and/or...
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In: PLOS Genetics, 2019, vol. 15, no. 12, p. e1008509
Understanding how the nervous system bridges sensation and behavior requires the elucidation of complex neural and molecular networks. Forward genetic approaches, such as screens conducted in C. elegans, have successfully identified genes required to process natural sensory stimuli. However, functional redundancy within the underlying neural circuits, which are often organized with multiple...
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In: PLOS Genetics, 2020, vol. 16, no. 10, p. e1009102
Ryanodine receptors (RyR) are essential regulators of cellular calcium homeostasis and signaling. Vertebrate genomes contain multiple RyR gene isoforms, expressed in different tissues and executing different functions. In contrast, invertebrate genomes contain a single RyR-encoding gene and it has long been proposed that different transcripts generated by alternative splicing may diversify...
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In: Cell Reports, 2020, vol. 30, no. 2, p. 397-408.e4
Pain sensation and aversive behaviors entail the activation of nociceptor neurons, whose function is largely conserved across animals. The functional heterogeneity of nociceptors and ethical concerns are challenges for their study in mammalian models. Here, we investigate the function of a single type of genetically identified C. elegans thermonociceptor named FLP. Using calcium imaging in...
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In: Genetics, 2015, vol. 200, no. 4, p. 1029–1034
By enabling a tight control of cell excitation, optogenetics is a powerful approach to study the function of neurons and neural circuits. With its transparent body, a fully mapped nervous system, easily quantifiable behaviors and many available genetic tools, Caenorhabditis elegans is an extremely well-suited model to decipher the functioning logic of the nervous system with optogenetics. Our...
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In: PLoS Genet, 2014, vol. 10, no. 10, p. e1004718
Parkinson's disease (PD) is the most common neurodegenerative movement disorder characterized by the progressive loss of dopaminergic (DA) neurons. Both environmental and genetic factors are thought to contribute to the pathogenesis of PD. Although several genes linked to rare familial PD have been identified, endogenous risk factors for sporadic PD, which account for the majority of PD cases,...
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In: BMC Genomics, 2014, vol. 15, no. 1, p. 364
Background: alternative splicing diversifies the pool of messenger RNA molecules encoded by individual genes. This diversity is particularly high when multiple splicing decisions cause a combinatorial arrangement of several alternate exons. We know very little on how the multiple decisions occurring during the maturation of single transcripts are coordinated and whether specific sequence elements...
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In: Nature Communications, 2013, vol. 4, p. -
To survive, animals need to minimize exposure to damaging agents. They can either stay away from noxious stimuli (defined as avoidance), requiring the detection of remote warning cues, or run away upon exposure to noxious stimuli (defined as escape). Here we combine behavioural quantitative analyses, simulations and genetics to determine how Caenorhabditis elegans minimizes exposure to noxious...
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In: PLoS Pathog, 2013, vol. 9, no. 8, p. e1003524
Monepantel is a member of the recently identified class of anthelmintics known as the amino-acetonitrile derivatives (AADs). Monepantel controls all major gastro-intestinal nematodes in sheep including those that are resistant to the classical anthelmintics. Previous studies have shown that the Caenorhabditis elegans acr-23 and the Haemonchus contortus Hco-mptl-1 genes may be prominent targets of...
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In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011, vol. 108, no. 51, p. 20790-20795
Alternative splicing is critical for diversifying eukaryotic proteomes, but the rules governing and coordinating splicing events among multiple alternate splice sites within individual genes are not well understood. We developed a quantitative PCR-based strategy to quantify the expression of the 12 transcripts encoded by the Caenorhabditis elegans slo-1 gene, containing three alternate splice...
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