Social Chemical Communication Determines Recovery From L1 Arrest via DAF-16 Activation

Alternative somatic and germline gene-regulatory strategies during starvation-induced developmental arrest

Nutrient availability governs growth and quiescence, and many animals arrest development when starved. Using C. elegans L1 arrest as a model, we show that gene expression changes deep into starvation. Surprisingly, relative expression of germline-enriched genes increases for days. We conditionally degrade the large subunit of RNA polymerase II using the auxin-inducible degron system and analyze absolute expression levels. We find that somatic transcription is required for survival, but the germline maintains transcriptional quiescence. Thousands of genes are continuously transcribed in the soma, though their absolute abundance declines, such that relative expression of germline transcripts increases given extreme transcript stability. Aberrantly activating transcription in starved germ cells compromises reproduction, demonstrating important physiological function of transcriptional quiescence. This work reveals alternative somatic and germline gene-regulatory strategies during starvation, with the soma maintaining a robust transcriptional response to support survival and the germline maintaining transcriptional quiescence to support future reproductive success.

Webster et al. show that the transcriptional response to starvation is mounted early in larval somatic cells supporting survival but that it wanes over time. In contrast, they show that the germline remains transcriptionally quiescent deep into starvation, supporting reproductive potential, while maintaining its transcriptome via transcript stability.

Using population selection and sequencing to characterize natural variation of starvation resistance in C. elegans

Starvation resistance is important to disease and fitness, but the genetic basis of its natural variation is unknown. Uncovering the genetic basis of complex, quantitative traits such as starvation resistance is technically challenging. We developed a synthetic-population (re)sequencing approach using molecular inversion probes (MIP-seq) to measure relative fitness during and after larval starvation in C. elegans. We applied this competitive assay to 100 genetically diverse, sequenced, wild strains, revealing natural variation in starvation resistance. We confirmed that the most starvation-resistant strains survive and recover from starvation better than the most starvation-sensitive strains using standard assays. We performed genome-wide association (GWA) with the MIP-seq trait data and identified three quantitative trait loci (QTL) for starvation resistance, and we created near isogenic lines (NILs) to validate the effect of these QTL on the trait. These QTL contain numerous candidate genes including several members of the Insulin/EGF Receptor-L Domain (irld) family. We used genome editing to show that four different irld genes have modest effects on starvation resistance. Natural variants of irld-39 and irld-52 affect starvation resistance, and increased resistance of the irld-39; irld-52 double mutant depends on daf-16/FoxO. DAF-16/FoxO is a widely conserved transcriptional effector of insulin/IGF signaling (IIS), and these results suggest that IRLD proteins modify IIS, though they may act through other mechanisms as well. This work demonstrates efficacy of using MIP-seq to dissect a complex trait and it suggests that irld genes are natural modifiers of starvation resistance in C. elegans.

Nutritional control of postembryonic development progression and arrest in Caenorhabditis elegans

Developmental programs are under strict genetic control that favors robustness of the process. In order to guarantee the same outcome in different environmental situations, development is modulated by input pathways, which inform about external conditions. In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, the process of postembryonic development involves a series of stereotypic cell divisions, the progression of which is controlled by the nutritional status of the animal. C. elegans can arrest development at different larval stages, leading to cell arrest of the relevant divisions of the stage. This means that studying the nutritional control of development in C. elegans we can learn about the mechanisms controlling cell division in an in vivo model. In this work, we reviewed the current knowledge about the nutrient sensing pathways that control the progression or arrest of development in response to nutrient availability, with a special focus on the arrest at the L1 stage.