Transferring the knowledge gained in Caenorhabditis elegans to mammalian cells

Caenorhabditis elegans is an excellent model to study processes such as morphogenesis, germline development or cell invasion in vivo. However, certain biological questions are very difficult or rather impossible to answer with multicellular organisms due to their high complexity and the associated technical difficulties. To overcome these limitations, and to test if the processes identified in Caenorhabditis elegans are also conserved in human, we are also working with various mammalian cell lines. Thereby, we are depleting the human homologous of the genes that are investigated in the worm in mammalian cells by lentiCRISPR or an inducible shRNA system, and analyze them with various techniques such as RNAseq, cell cycle analysis by FACS, cell invasion assays, immunoblotting and immunostainings.

The insights gained in mammalian cell lines can then be transferred back to the multicellular organism Caenorhabditis elegans and further examined.

Key publications

DNA replication-independent function of pre-replication complex genes during cell invasion in C. elegans

Lattmann, Evelyn; Deng, Ting; Walser, Michael; Widmer, Patrizia; Rexha-Lambert, Charlotte; Prasad, Vibhu; Eichhoff, Ossia; Daube, Michael; Dummer, Reinhard; Levesque, Mitchell P; Hajnal, Alex

PLOS Biology. February 22, 2022.

The CHORD protein CHP-1 regulates EGF receptor trafficking and signaling in C. elegans and in human cells.

Haag A, Walser M, Henggeler A, Hajnal A.

Elife. 2020 Feb 13;9. pii: e50986.