Open AccessTemporal scaling in C. elegans larval development
Author(s) -
Olga Filina,
Burak Demirbas,
Rik Haagmans,
Jeroen S. van Zon
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1091-6490
pISSN - 0027-8424
DOI - 10.1073/pnas.2123110119
Subject(s) - caenorhabditis elegans , biology , hatching , larva , organism , model organism , event (particle physics) , ecology , zoology , evolutionary biology , genetics , gene , physics , quantum mechanics
Significance An enduring mystery of development is how its timing is controlled, particularly for development after birth, where timing is highly flexible and depends on environmental conditions, such as food availability and diet. We followed timing of cell- and organism-level events in individualCaenorhabditis elegans larvae developing from hatching to adulthood, uncovering widespread variations in event timing, both between isogenic individuals in the same environment and when changing conditions and genotypes. However, in almost all cases, we found that events occurred at the same time, when time was rescaled by the duration of development measured in each individual. This observation of “temporal scaling” poses strong constraints on models to explain timing of larval development.