Conserved miRNAs are candidate post-transcriptional regulators of developmental arrest in free-living and parasitic nematodes.

ABSTRACT: Animal development is complex yet surprisingly robust. Animals may develop alternative phenotypes conditional on environmental changes. Under unfavorable conditions, Caenorhabditis elegans larvae enter the dauer stage, a developmentally arrested, long-lived, and stress-resistant state. Dauer larvae of free-living nematodes and infective larvae of parasitic nematodes share many traits including a conserved endocrine signaling module (DA/DAF-12), which is essential for the formation of dauer and infective larvae. We speculated that conserved post-transcriptional regulatory mechanism might also be involved in executing the dauer and infective larvae fate. We used an unbiased sequencing strategy to characterize the microRNA (miRNA) gene complement in C. elegans, Pristionchus pacificus, and Str

SUBMITTER: Ahmed R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3730342 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature