ArticlePLoS genetics2007
A Caenorhabditis elegans wild type defies the temperature-size rule owing to a single nucleotide polymorphism in tra-3.
Article in PLoS genetics, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 58 papers.
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Who cites it
58 citing papers in PubMed, 113 citations in OpenAlex.
- The power of diet - the effect of different types of diet on the plastic body size response to temperature.Oecologia · 2026Article
- High-throughput developmental assay of cold tolerance inmicroPublication biology · 2025Article
- Life history in Caenorhabditis elegans: from molecular genetics to evolutionary ecology.Genetics · 2024Review
- Plasticity of Life-History Traits and Adult Fitness of Fall Webworm in Relation to Climate Change.Insects · 2024Article
- A Comparative Study of Life History Traits inmicroPublication biology · 2024Article
- Nematode gene annotation by machine-learning-assisted proteotranscriptomics enables proteome-wide evolutionary analysis.Genome research · 2023Article
- Article
- From QTL to gene: C. elegans facilitates discoveries of the genetic mechanisms underlying natural variation.Trends in genetics : TIG · 2021Review
- The genetics of gene expression in a Caenorhabditis elegans multiparental recombinant inbred line population.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2021Article
- An economical and highly adaptable optogenetics system for individual and population-level manipulation of Caenorhabditis elegans.BMC biology · 2021Article
- Shrinking body sizes in response to warming: explanations for the temperature-size rule with special emphasis on the role of oxygen.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2021Article
- Biallelic variants in the small optic lobe calpain CAPN15 are associated with congenital eye anomalies, deafness and other neurodevelopmental deficits.Human molecular genetics · 2020Article
- Natural variation in the sequestosome-related gene, sqst-5, underlies zinc homeostasis in Caenorhabditis elegans.PLoS genetics · 2020Article
- Bacteria- and temperature-regulated peptides modulate β-catenin signaling inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- The GeneG3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2020Article
- Dissecting the eQTL Micro-Architecture inFrontiers in genetics · 2020Article
- WormQTL2: an interactive platform for systems genetics in Caenorhabditis elegans.Database : the journal of biological databases and curation · 2020Article
- Wrapping culture plates with Parafilm MBMC research notes · 2019Article
- A Novel Gene Underlies Bleomycin-Response Variation inGenetics · 2019Article
- Long-read sequencing reveals intra-species tolerance of substantial structural variations and new subtelomere formation inGenome research · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Ectotherms rely for their body heat on surrounding temperatures. A key question in biology is why most ectotherms mature at a larger size at lower temperatures, a phenomenon known as the temperature-size rule. Since temperature affects virtually all processes in a living organism, current theories to explain this phenomenon are diverse and complex and assert often from opposing assumptions. Although widely studied, the molecular genetic control of the temperature-size rule is unknown. We found that the Caenorhabditis elegans wild-type N2 complied with the temperature-size rule, whereas wild-type CB4856 defied it. Using a candidate gene approach based on an N2 x CB4856 recombinant inbred panel in combination with mutant analysis, complementation, and transgenic studies, we show that a single nucleotide polymorphism in tra-3 leads to mutation F96L in the encoded calpain-like protease. This mutation attenuates the ability of CB4856 to grow larger at low temperature. Homology modelling predicts that F96L reduces TRA-3 activity by destabilizing the DII-A domain. The data show that size adaptation of ectotherms to temperature changes may be less complex than previously thought because a subtle wild-type polymorphism modulates the temperature responsiveness of body size. These findings provide a novel step toward the molecular understanding of the temperature-size rule, which has puzzled biologists for decades.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.