Novel viruses have been discovered in wild Caenorahbditis nematode isolates and can now be used to explore host antiviral pathways, nematode ecology, and host-pathogen co-evolution.

Many biological systems produce an invariant output when faced with stochastic or environmental variation. This robustness of system output to variation affecting the underlying process may allow for "cryptic" genetic evolution within the system without change in output. We studied variation of cell fate patterning of Caenorhabditis elegans vulva precursors, a developmental system that relies on a simple intercellular signaling network and yields an invariant output of cell fates and lineages among C. elegans wild isolates. We first investigated the system's genetic variation in C. elegans by means of genetic tools and cell ablation to break down its buffering mechanisms. We uncovered distinct architectures of quantitative variation along the Ras signaling cascade, including compensatory variation, and differences in cell sensitivity to induction along the anteroposterior axis. In the unperturbed system, we further found variation between isolates in spatio-temporal dynamics of Ras pathway activity, which can explain the phenotypic differences revealed upon perturbation. Finally, the variation mostly affects the signaling pathways in a tissue-specific manner. We thus demonstrate and characterize microevolution of a developmental signaling network. In addition, our results suggest that the vulva genetic screens would have yielded a different mutation spectrum, especially for Wnt pathway mutations, had they been performed in another C. elegans genetic background.[Keywords: Signaling network; evolution; C. elegans; vulva; robustness; cryptic variation] Supplemental material is available at http://www.genesdev.org.

BackgroundThe nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is able to take up external double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) and mount an RNA interference response, leading to the inactivation of specific gene expression. The uptake of ingested dsRNAs into intestinal cells has been shown to require the SID-2 transmembrane protein in C. elegans. By contrast, C. briggsae was shown to be naturally insensitive to ingested dsRNAs, yet could be rendered sensitive by transgenesis with the C. elegans sid-2 gene. Here we aimed to elucidate the evolution of the susceptibility to external RNAi in the Caenorhabditis genus.Principal FindingsWe study the sensitivity of many new species of Caenorhabditis to ingested dsRNAs matching a conserved actin gene sequence from the nematode Oscheius tipulae. We find ample variation in the Caenorhabditis genus in the ability to mount an RNAi response. We map this sensitivity onto a phylogenetic tree, and show that sensitivity or insensitivity have evolved convergently several times. We uncover several evolutionary losses in sensitivity, which may have occurred through distinct mechanisms. We could render C. remanei and C. briggsae sensitive to ingested dsRNAs by transgenesis of the Cel-sid-2 gene. We thus provide tools for RNA interference studies in these species. We also show that transgenesis by injection is possible in many Caenorhabditis species.ConclusionsThe ability of animals to take up dsRNAs or to respond to them by gene inactivation is under rapid evolution in the Caenorhabditis genus. This study provides a framework and tools to use RNA interference and transgenesis in various Caenorhabditis species for further comparative and evolutionary studies.