Worm friends, we need your help! For the next C. elegans Mentor Match cycle, we’re gathering testimonials from past mentors and mentees. One of our biggest challenges is recruiting new mentees, and hearing directly from past participants could really help. Please record a short video, and share!

We’re excited to announce #Worm27 will be in Kobe, Japan, July 18–22, 2027. Join the global Worm community for science, collaboration, and connection in a stunning city between mountains and sea. Save the date—Kobe awaits! What are you most excited for? Tell us below.⬇️

Do what you should, not what you could.

Someone in the news departments of @nature.com or @science.org needs to take a look at this--its a huge scandal from the scientific supplier that has become a monopoly

Our latest work is now online in NSMB: maternal yolk carries microRNAs from the intestine to embryos, shaping gene regulation and stress resilience in the next generation. rdcu.be/fj8Er #Epigenetics #microRNA #Inheritance @pasteur.fr @devstempasteur.bsky.social @erc.europa.eu

Natural variations in small RNA origin loci generate circuit diversity underlying temperature acclimation in Caenorhabditis elegans www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

If your manuscript has been rejected from a journal post review, but you think the reviewers' comments can be easily addressed, consider submitting to your manuscript to Development. Our Editors can make a decision without requesting a full new set of peer review reports.

We're hiring a postdoc to develop and use custom optical instruments for measuring and manipulating neural activity in worms and flies. Please apply via interfolio: apply.interfolio.com/186001

"Together, these findings demonstrate that LLM hallucinations are infiltrating knowledge production at scale, threatening both the reliability and equity of future scientific discovery as human and AI systems draw on the existing literature" arxiv.org/abs/2605.07723

Adulthood depletion of Integrator extends lifespan and healthspan via defective pre-mRNA processing www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Comparative transcriptomics reveals an extracellular worm Argonaute as an ancestral regulator of LTR retrotransposons academic.oup.com/gbe/advance-...

Come for the beautiful images and stay for the amazing science! Congratulations @celjauebel.bsky.social !!!!!!!

ArXiv is going to ban researchers for a year if they are caught submitting AI slop. ArXiv told us it's a one strike rule: do it once, you're out. www.404media.co/new-arxiv-ru...

Can’t wait!!!

The 26th International Worm Meeting will be held in Kobe, Japan from July 18 to 22, 2027. Save the date! #Worm27

Single-type neuron transcriptomics uncovers cell-type-specific regulators of host defense in Caenorhabditis elegans https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.08.723815v1

How do generalist parasites stay adaptable across many hosts? Root-knot nematodes show balancing selection maintaining host-specific variation in key pathogenicity genes. academic.oup.com/evlett/advan... Image Wikimedia

The nonsense-mediated decay RNA-surveillance pathway facilitates the hypoxia response by C. elegans https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.06.721854v1

I guarantee you will not be able to stop till you reach the end of Mukund’s thread. A gripping read!

Breaking news: Indiana University plant microbiologist Roger Innes has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders. The move comes after Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs. https://scim.ag/4tsDqRr

As one of the postdocs in my lab will be leaving to take a faculty position soon I will likely be placing a new ad in the coming week for someone with experience mapping C. elegans mutants from screens or doing bacterial genetics. If anyone knows/has candidates #Celegans #worms #bacteria #genetics

Don’t miss the new issue of #ScienceSignaling! Scientists uncover the molecular wiring that supports phenotypic plasticity in C. elegans, a new Focus explores community resources that will propel the next era of lipidomics research, and more. https://scim.ag/4eKMr4L

New paper from the lab. "Cap-adjacent 2′-O-ribose methylation of RNA in C. elegans is required for postembryonic growth and germline development in the presence of the decapping exonuclease EOL-1". This thread explains the background to the paper and our key findings. doi.org/10.1093/nar/... 1/15

A clear/significant finding derived from the single cell (sc) analysis of biological systems has been the realization that phenotypically homogeneous populations are heterogeneous at the level of gene expression (GE). www.cell.com/fulltext/S00... 🧵

1/ Excited to share our new paper in Science @science.org: “Toward life with a 19-amino acid alphabet through generative artificial intelligence design.” A great collab w/ Sergey's group @sokrypton.org at MIT @columbiasysbio.bsky.social science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🦠🧬🛠️🖥️💥

What is the mutation rate in natural vs laboratory populations? What are the typical divergence times among and within species? In #GENETICS, Wei et al. analyzed the evolution of clonal #Celegans genotypes collected and sequenced in Santeuil wood, France.🪱 🔗 buff.ly/1rINY0W

Genomic sequence and structural variations accumulating between laboratory lineages of wild type C. elegans https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.27.720957v1

Biologist folk (especially in evolutionary biology and/or ecology, but it don’t matter): Can you give me your favorite examples of trade offs in biology? Organism or system don’t matter. Primary literature or reviews preferred.

"These findings...raise the possibility that mitochondria can be reprogrammed to generate new organelles with specialized functions" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Absolutely beautiful paper by a core team at the RIKEN in which the telomerase RNA component has (finally) been identified, in the nematode *C. elegans*. Surprisingly, it does not have its own promoter, but is located inside the intron of a germline-expressed gene (nmy-2)! 🤩 doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Corollary: No experiment is perfect. Strive for the most, fix in post-production

A practical guide to sample preparation for immunoprecipitation coupled with mass spectrometry analysis of C. elegans proteins #micropublication #biology #data #caltechlibrary #Celegans #Methods #NewF https://micropublication.org/journals/biology/micropub-biology-002087

New for @undark.org: "What I Learned from Teaching Darwin" "For Darwin at least, science was a conversation between humans and nature, more than it was an industry. I wish that were true today, for all of us." undark.org/2026/04/23/o...

My latest column for @chemistryworld.com is on a paper recently published in Science, about which one of the lead authors (Bob Tjian) contacted me out of the blue because of the relevance to what I say in my book How Life Works. 🧵 www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/coll...

Great summary by @philipcball.bsky.social! Our findings certainly don’t invalidate the central dogma, but rather demonstrate an unexpected (and cool!) structural mechanism by which a sequence-specific DNA is created in a cell. (1/6)

Such an exciting time to be in neuroscience. To study how animals do the amazing things they do: from collective behaviors to navigation, camouflage and more. How can we define the constraints of a sensory system if we don't study diverse animals and their behaviors? Oh and #fundscience.

! Epigenetic constraints and enhancer innovation link neuronal plasticity to evolutionary adaptation www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Will someone give this man a Faculty job already?! #AskingForAFriend

It’s so beautiful to read these stories. I’m happy to know there are so many thoughtful PIs out there. We need more of them to make science a better place! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Irini Topalidou received the GSA Mentorship Award for her contributions to mentoring in the C. elegans field. genestogenomes.org/being-a-staf... Congratulations to all the awardees and stay tuned for more profiles of 2026 GSA award recipients!

Judith Kimble received the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal for her work on discovering the first stem cell niche and lifetime achievement in genetics. genestogenomes.org/a-lifelong-q...

Whole-organism spatial transcriptomics at single-cell resolution in C. elegans #SingleCell 🧪🧬🖥️ https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.09.717568v1

Analysis of Nematode Ventral Nerve Cords Suggests Multiple Instances of Evolutionary Changes to Neuron Number onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

New preprint! "A stereotyped glial attachment determines the morphology and function of neuronal cilia" doi.org/10.64898/202... We find that C. elegans neuronal cilia attach to glia, we identify a protein required for cilia-glia attachment, and we show that glial attachments alter cilia signaling.

New paper alert: Our latest shows how maternal diet impacts ribosome levels and early growth intergenerationally in #Celegans Led by Sigma Pradhan and in collab with @nstroustrup.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... @plosbiology.org @izb-unibern.bsky.social @unibe.ch

Look out world--check out these great upcoming talks!

The worm community has lost a true legend with the passing of Don Moerman. Don's impact on C. elegans research is beyond measure. A friend to many of us here in MN, his work has been invaluable, contributing >5,400 strains (VC & DM) to the CGC, 20% of our collection!

“first drafts of Results, Discussion, and Introduction should be the trainee’s own work. AI can help with grammar…tightening prose…critiquing the logic of an argument you’ve already made. But the hard part of forming the argument needs to be yours.’ blekhman.substack.com/p/you-need-t...