Insulin Signal Is Required for Sensory Neuron Development in Caenorhabditis elegans

Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is a powerful model for the study of nervous system development. This study investigated mechanisms required for the development of C. elegans sensory neurons, BAGs. C. elegans express many insulin-like peptides (ILPs), which are released from BAGs, throughout the nervous system. It is found that the p38 MAP kinase PMK-3 that is required for the differentiation of chemosensory BAG neurons limits an ILP signal that represses expression of a BAG neuron fate. To understand how PMK-3 functions in BAG neuron development, wild-type and pmk-3 mutant chemosensory BAG neurons were purified and their transcriptomes were determined using RNA sequencing.