1st Edition
Nature's Gift to Neuroscience A Tribute to Sydney Brenner and John Sulston
In the 1960s, Sydney Brenner proposed to use the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans to discover the control mechanisms of animal development and to reveal how a small number of neurons generate different behaviours, giving birth to a vibrant community that uses this animal model for their studies. Brenner was aided in his aim by John Sulston, who mapped the C. elegans cell lineages – from a single cell to the multicellular adult – which transformed the field of developmental biology.
As a tribute to these two men, this book captures the perspectives of some of the early pioneers of the worm community, from Martin Chalfie, Robert Waterston and Donald Moerman to Catherine Rankin, Antony Stretton and John White. It also includes contributions from subsequent generations of the community, who explore the development and function of the C. elegans nervous system. This book features how this animal has become one of the best models for elucidating the biology of different sensory modalities and their complex behavioural outputs, or how this animal’s survival strategies have contributed to our understanding of ageing and neurodegeneration. Thus, this volume documents the development of the C. elegans neuroscience field, from infancy to maturity.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Neurogenetics.
Introduction: Nature's gift to neuroscience
Joy Alcedo, Yishi Jin, Douglas S. Portman, Veena Prahlad, David Raizen, Georgia Rapti, X.Z. Shawn Xu, Yun Zhang, and Chun-Fang Wu
Part 1: The early years of C. elegans neurogenetics
1. My life with Sydney, 1961–1971
Antony O. W. Stretton
2. John Sulston (1942–2018): a personal perspective
Robert H. Waterston and Donald G. Moerman
3. A touching story
Martin Chalfie
4. But can they learn? My accidental discovery of learning and memory in C. elegans
Catharine H. Rankin
5. Of worms and men
John White
Part 2: Nervous system development
6. A perspective on C. elegans neurodevelopment: from early visionaries to a booming neuroscience research
Georgia Rapti
7. Neuronal specification in C. elegans: combining lineage inheritance with intercellular signaling
Antoine Barrière and Vincent Bertrand
8. Molecular mechanisms governing axonal transport: a C. elegans perspective
Amruta Vasudevan and Sandhya P. Koushika
9. C. elegans MAGU-2/Mpp5 homolog regulates epidermal phagocytosis and synapse density
Salvatore J. Cherra III, Alexandr Goncharov, Daniela Boassa, Mark Ellisman, and Yishi Jin
10. Synaptic remodeling, lessons from C. elegans
Andrea Cuentas-Condori and David M. Miller, 3rd
11. What about the males? the C. elegans sexually dimorphic nervous system and a CRISPR-based tool to study males in a hermaphroditic species
Jonathon D. Walsh, Olivier Boivin, and Maureen M. Barr
12. Cell-type-specific promoters for C. elegans glia
Wendy Fung, Leigh Wexler, and Maxwell G. Heiman
Part 3: From inputs to outputs
13. C. elegans: a sensible model for sensory biology
Adam J. Iliff and X.Z. Shawn Xu
14. Temperature signaling underlying thermotaxis and cold tolerance in Caenorhabditis elegans
Asuka Takeishi, Natsune Takagaki, and Atsushi Kuhara
15. Mechano-gated channels in C. elegans
Umar Al-Sheikh and Lijun Kang
16. What can a worm learn in a bacteria-rich habitat?
He Liu and Yun Zhang
17. C. elegans aversive olfactory learning generates diverse intergenerational effects
Ana Goncalves Pereira, Xicotencatl Gracida, Konstantinos Kagias and Yun Zhang
Part 4: Social and sexual behaviors
18. Social and sexual behaviors in C. elegans: the first fifty years
Douglas S. Portman
19. Small molecule signals mediate social behaviors in C. elegans
Caroline S. Muirhead and Jagan Srinivasan
20. Intraguild predation between Pristionchus pacificus and Caenorhabditis elegans: a complex interaction with the potential for aggressive behaviour
Kathleen T. Quach and Sreekanth H. Chalasani
21. Plasticity of pheromone-mediated avoidance behavior in C. elegans
YongJin Cheon, Hyeonjeong Hwang, and Kyuhyung Kim
Part 5: Quiescence and sleep
22. Worms sleep: a perspective
David Raizen
23. Cellular damage, including wounding, drives C. elegans stress-induced sleep
Desiree L. Goetting, Richard Mansfield, Rony Soto, and Cheryl Van Buskirk
24. Orcokinin neuropeptides regulate sleep in Caenorhabditis elegans
Madison Honer, Kristen Buscemi, Natalie Barrett, Niknaz Riazati, Gerald Orlando, and Matthew D. Nelson
25. Discriminating between sleep and exercise-induced fatigue using computer vision and behavioral genetics
Kelsey N. Schuch, Lakshmi Narasimhan Govindarajan, Yuliang Guo, Saba N. Baskoylu, Sarah Kim, Benjamin Kimia, Thomas Serre, and Anne C. Hart
26. The OptoGenBox – a device for long-term optogenetics in C. elegans
Inka Busack, Florian Jordan, Peleg Sapir, and Henrik Bringmann
Part 6: Survival, aging and disease
27. Neuromodulators: an essential part of survival
Joy Alcedo and Veena Prahlad
28. Neuroendocrine control of lipid metabolism: lessons from C. elegans
Supriya Srinivasan
29. The discovery and consequences of the central role of the nervous system in the control of protein homeostasis
Veena Prahlad
30. Host-microbe interactions and the behavior of Caenorhabditis elegans
Dennis H. Kim and Steven W. Flavell
31. Neurogenetics of nictation, a dispersal strategy in nematodes
Heeseung Yang, Bo Yun Lee, Hyunsoo Yim, and Junho Lee
32. Regulatory systems that mediate the effects of temperature on the lifespan of Caenorhabditis elegans
Byounghun Kim, Jongsun Lee, Younghun Kim, and Seung-Jae V. Lee
33. The contribution of C. elegans neurogenetics to understanding neurodegenerative diseases
Joseph J. H. Liang, Issa A. McKinnon, and Catharine H. Rankin
Part 7: Worm photo and art gallery
34. A journey to ‘tame a small metazoan organism’, seen through the artistic eyes of C. elegans researchers
Eleni Gourgou, Alexandra R. Willis, Sebastian Giunti, Maria J. De Rosa, Amanda G. Charlesworth, Mirella Hernandez Lima, Elizabeth Glater, Sonja Soo, Bianca Pereira, Kübra Akbas, Anushka Deb, Madhushree Kamak, Mark W. Moyle, Annika Traa, Aakanksha Singhvi, Surojit Sural, and Eugene Jennifer Jin
Biography
Chun-Fang Wu is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Neurogenetics. He has conducted neurobiological research in Drosophila, applying genetic, cell biological, physiological, and behavioural techniques in the studies.
Joy Alcedo is Guest Editor for the C. elegans special issue of the Journal of Neurogenetics. Her research focuses on the sensory and neuromodulatory influences on C. elegans development and survival programs.
