Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.
Subscribe

Logo for

Science 335 (6068): 545-546

Copyright © 2012 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Surviving in a Toxic World

Adrian J. Wolstenholme

The world can be a dangerous place. Although the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is probably best known as a model organism thriving in the undemanding environment of research laboratories, in nature it lives in the soil, exposed to many toxic compounds that are often produced by the microorganisms on which it feeds. One group of these compounds, the avermectins, are produced by the soil bacterium, Streptomyces avermitilis (1). On page 574 of this issue, Ghosh et al. (2) report that a natural variation in a C. elegans gene, glc-1, confers resistance to the avermectins and also to S. avermitilis. Because avermectin resistance is a serious problem in veterinary medicine ( 3), and ivermectin (a semisynthetic avermectin) is used to control human parasitic diseases such as river blindness (4), this result has wider implications for effective parasite control and human health.

Department of Infectious Diseases and Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA.

E-mail adrianw{at}uga.edu

To Advertise     Find Products

Science Signaling. ISSN 1937-9145 (online), 1945-0877 (print). Pre-2008: Science's STKE. ISSN 1525-8882