Neural pathways, which couple temperature-sensing neurons to motor and autonomic outputs, allow animals to navigate away from and adjust metabolism rates in response to the temperature extremes often encountered. ttx-3 is required for the specification of the AIY interneuron in the C. elegans neural pathway that mediates thermoregulation. ttx-3 null mutant animals exhibit the same thermotactic behavioral defect as that seen with laser ablation of AIY in wild type, suggesting that AIY does not signal in this mutant. ttx-3 encodes a LIM homeodomain protein. A ttx-3-GFP fusion gene is expressed specifically in the adult AIY interneuron pair, which connects to thermosensory neurons. In ttx-3 mutant animals, the AIY interneuron is generated but exhibits patterns of abnormal axonal outgrowth. Thus, the TTX-3 LIM homeodomain protein is likely to regulate the expression of target genes required late in AIY differentiation for the function of this interneuron in the thermoregulatory pathway. The ttx-3-dependent thermosensory pathway also couples to the temperature-modulated dauer neuroendocrine signaling pathway, showing that ttx-3 specifies AIY thermosensory information processing of both motor and autonomic outputs.

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This paper describes the changes in equilibrium forms of cyclohexane as functions of temperature and pressure. The crystals were grown by increasing pressure using a diamond anvil cell (DAC). After single crystals were prepared in the DAC under high pressure, the crystals were maintained for a long period under constant pressure and temperature. During the changes in the shape of the single crystal, both cubic and orthorhombic shapes appeared. The cubic crystals (the solid phase I of cyclohexane) were grown from the liquid and the orthorhombic crystals (the solid phase III) were grown from the solid phase I. These crystal shape variations, depending on pressure and temperature, were consistent for the anisotropies of the cubic and orthorhombic unit cells predicted from the molecular arrangements in the unit cells. We may be able to control the morphology of the organic ring compounds strongly bound by the interaction between their ring components using pressure variation.