James Lightfoot

Curious about how the cannibalistic nematode Pristionchus pacificus hunts its prey? Check out our preprint on BioRxiv, where we explore the roles of mechanosensation and chemosensation, using behaviour tracking among other methods!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Two weeks to go until @jameslightfoot.bsky.social lab and I will host some excellent colleagues from around the world at the NWG meeting in Göttingen for Symposium 24@neurowissg.bsky.social!
Be ready for a diverse line up with 🐸 🕷️ 🪱 🪰 under the common umbrella of 'evolution of behavior'!

Fantastic work from the lab of @maxplanck.de colleague Paul Rainey, demonstrating how a locus can evolve to become hypermutable. Mutation rates depend on evolutionary relevance of this evolved locus!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Have you ever wondered what is on the surface of a #nematode like #Celegans?

…it turns out they are surprisingly greasy little critters and covered in many different lipids.

To read more about this, check out the excellent paper from the Chauhan lab which we were very happy to be a small part of.

Upconverting microgauges reveal intraluminal force dynamics in vivo Nature - Nanoparticle-based ‘microgauges’ are developed for in vivo force sensing and deployed in C. elegans to investigate how mechanical force correlates with electrical signalling in...

How hard do bacteria-eating nematodes bite in order to break the bacterial cell wall? Check out our new paper, led by Jason Casar & collab with Jen Dionne, using pressure sensing beads that change color upon compression (bluetorial coming soon) rdcu.be/d5n7v

Institute Christmas party shenanigans 🪱🥳

Are you planning to perform single-copy insertions in C. elegans???
Check out our first lab paper!! 🥳
Our *Universal SKI System* uses just one plasmid that can be inserted into any chromosome! Easy peasy!
#Celegans #CRISPR #worms #research #science #techniques

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

CGC1, a new reference genome for Caenorhabditis elegans https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.04.626850v1

Molecular patterns of evolutionary changes throughout the whole nervous system of multiple nematode species https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.23.624988v1 One avenue to better understand brain evolution is to map molecular patterns of evolutionary changes

Molecular patterns of evolutionary changes throughout the whole nervous system of multiple nematode species https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.23.624988v1

Evolutionary plasticity in nematode Hox gene complements and genomic loci arrangement - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Evolutionary plasticity in nematode Hox gene complements and genomic loci arrangement

Evolutionary plasticity in nematode Hox gene complements and genomic loci arrangement

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Rapid chromosome evolution and acquisition of thermosensitive stochastic sex determination in nematode androdioecious hermaphrodites - Nature Communications Sexual systems evolve frequently in nematodes. Through large-scale genomic analyses, Yoshida et al. find rapid chromosome evolution, sex chromosome turnover and acquisition of stochastic sex determina...

Another fantastic Pristionchus paper, this time from the Yoshida and Sommer labs highlighting the rapid sex chromosome evolution in these nematodes. This includes the evolution of five distinct karyotypes across the Pristionchus genus.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Cilia structure and intraflagellar transport differentially regulate sensory response dynamics within and between C. elegans chemosensory neurons The relative contributions of intraflagellar transport (IFT) and cilia structure to sensory neuron responses remains unclear. This study reveals unexpected complexity in the contribution of IFT and ci...

🧪 Lab's latest!! Work by PD (and now PI) Alison Philbrook.
C. elegans sensory neurons have gorgeous #cilia. We’ve always thought that a) no cilia = no sensory responses, & b) no IFT = no cilia. Punchline is we thought wrong. Read paper for more!
#neuroscience
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Description of two new Pristionchus species from South Korea Based on molecular markers, mating experiments, morphological observations and ecological data, two Pristionchus species...

While Pristionchus pacificus is our main species of interest, there are many amazing Pristionchus out there. Thanks to work from Matthias Herrmann, two more species have been discovered in South Korea bringing the number of Pristionchus to 50 including 8 hermaphrodites! sciendo.com/article/10.2...

Thank you very much for the invite and to everyone who came to listen to my talk @biozentrum.bsky.social! I thoroughly enjoyed hearing about the amazing science taking place and the opportunity to meet so many enthusiastic scientists. Special thanks for the invite from Susan Mango! 🪱

Thank you very much, it was a pleasure to visit and get to talk science and bitey worms with everyone!

A picture of a lecture room full of people. There's a projected slide with a worm on it, and James is standing in front of it

Vvvvvvvvvvery excited to have James Lightfoot @jameslightfoot.bsky.social today at the @biozentrum.bsky.social. Predation, worms, evolution, explosions, the whole shebang

cGMP-dependent pathway and a GPCR kinase are required for photoresponse in the nematode Pristionchus pacificus Author summary Nematodes are a highly diverse group of animals found in a wide variety of habitats and sensory systems. In particular, light-induced behavior has been found to differ among species. Th...

Great Pristionchus pacificus paper by the Okumura lab. They investigate its light avoidance behaviour and show some key differences compared to how this functions and has evolved compared to C. elegans!

journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...