Gary A. Silverman

TL;DR: Evidence is provided for the close association between the IIS and the PN pathways, and the authors believe that high-throughput screening campaigns, which target the C. elegans IIS pathway, may identify drugs that are efficacious in treating numerous conformational diseases.

TL;DR: A comparative genomics study using Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism suggested that C. elegans expressed at least two inhibitory-type serpins with nonoverlapping expression and inhibitory profiles, and found that these profiles share significant similarities with the profiles of clade B intracellular serpin members in higher vertebrates.

TL;DR: The clade L serpin repertoire of Caenorhabditis elegans and other nematode species was sought to define and it was found that unlike their RSL-encoding paralogues, the relatively high percentage of non-RSL encoding serpins in C. elegans was a vestige of recent duplication events and these latter genes were unlikely to serve essential functions in CaenOrhabditIS species.

TL;DR: DNA sequence analysis suggested that the terminal deficiency in this 18q-syndrome patient arose via illegitimate (non-homologous) recombination, raising the possibility that a subset of chromosomal aberrations appearing cytogenetically and molecularly as simple terminal truncations or deletions are caused by small (<1000 kb) cryptic rearrangements.

TL;DR: The clade B/intracellular serpins protect cells from peptidase-mediated injury by forming covalent complexes with their targets and may function as an endogenous inhibitor of these peptidases.