PMID:28166192

Citation	'Burton, NO, Furuta, T, Webster, AK, Kaplan, RE, Baugh, LR, Arur, S and Horvitz, HR (2017) Insulin-like signalling to the maternal germline controls progeny response to osmotic stress. Nat. Cell Biol. '
Abstract	In 1893 August Weismann proposed that information about the environment could not pass from somatic cells to germ cells, a hypothesis now known as the Weismann barrier. However, recent studies have indicated that parental exposure to environmental stress can modify progeny physiology and that parental stress can contribute to progeny disorders. The mechanisms regulating these phenomena are poorly understood. We report that the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans can protect itself from osmotic stress by entering a state of arrested development and can protect its progeny from osmotic stress by increasing the expression of the glycerol biosynthetic enzyme GPDH-2 in progeny. Both of these protective mechanisms are regulated by insulin-like signalling: insulin-like signalling to the intestine regulates developmental arrest, while insulin-like signalling to the maternal germline regulates glycerol metabolism in progeny. Thus, there is a heritable link between insulin-like signalling to the maternal germline and progeny metabolism and gene expression. We speculate that analogous modulation of insulin-like signalling to the germline is responsible for effects of the maternal environment on human diseases that involve insulin signalling, such as obesity and type-2 diabetes.
Links	PubMed Online version:10.1038/ncb3470
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Annotations

Gene product	Qualifier	GO Term	Evidence Code	with/from	Aspect	Extension	Notes	Status
CAEEL:ILB3		GO:0047484: regulation of response to osmotic stress	ECO:0000315:		P		Supplementary Figs. 1h and 1i: Shows that INS-3 is responsible for developmental arrest in response to osmotic stress. Referred to in paper as INS-3, insulin like peptide, in C. elegans.	complete CACAO 12274
CAEEL:GPDH2		GO:0047484: regulation of response to osmotic stress	ECO:0000315:		P		Fig 2b shows that GPDH-2 is required for parental protection of progeny in response to osmotic stress (i.e. the parental protein is required to regulate response to progeny's osmotic stress). The protein is called GPDH-2 in the paper, used with the organism C. elegans	complete CACAO 12277

References

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