Wild nematode worms learn to avoid harmful bacteria—and their offspring inherit this knowledge (IMAGE)
Caption
Pv1-induced learned avoidance causes avoidance of P. mendocina, a beneficial natural bacterial species.
Schematic outlining the findings of the study. Prior to exposure to pathogenic P. vranovensis, worms are naively attracted to both P. vranovensis, and the non-pathogenic P. mendocina. Exposure to P. vranovensis or to the Pv1 small RNA of P. vranovensis induces learned avoidance of P. vranovensis in worms and four generations of progeny. Exposed worms not only avoid the pathogenic P. vranovensis, but also the non-pathogenic P. mendocina. Schematic was created using Biorender. Each dot represents an individual choice assay plate (B-F). Boxplots: center line, median; box range, 25th–75th percentiles; whiskers denote minimum-maximum values. One-way ANOVA with Tukey’s multiple comparison’s test, **p<0.01, ns, not significant (B); Unpaired, two-tailed Student’s t test, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001 (D-F). For the survival assay in (A), ***p<0.001 (by Log-rank (Mantel-Cox) test for survival).
Credit
Murphy et al., 2024, PLOS Genetics, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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Credit must be given to the creator.
License
CC BY