Grant: Operating Grant

During the development of any animal, cells communicate with each other. Animals as distantly related as worms, flies, and mammals use many of the same mechanisms of cell to cell communication to control diverse aspects of their development. Disruption of these paths of communication can result in serious birth defects or cancer. Studying development in a simple animal like the roundworm C. elegans allows a detailed understanding of the signaling pathways that control development to be achieved through the application of powerful genetic and molecular tools. We study a signaling pathway that regulates one aspect of development, sex determination, in C. elegans. Some elements of this pathway are common to the worm and more complicated animals, including humans. Studying sex determination in C. elegans will help us to understand how these shared regulators work, and it can reveal new kinds of regulation. We have evidence for a new type of regulation in the C. elegans germ line, which is, as in other animals, the tissue that contributes to the next generation. Our results suggest the existence of a mechanism that prevents a gene from being expressed in the C. elegans germ line unless that gene was previously expressed in the germ line of the mother. Regulation of this type may be of general importance in safeguarding the integrity of the germ line, and we are interested in determining how it works and how general it is.