© University of Michigan
Ann Arbor —
Researchers have identified a receptor protein that can detect when winter is coming.The findings, published Aug. 29 in the journal
Cell, reveal the first known cold-sensing protein to respond to extreme cold."Clearly, nerves in the skin can sense cold. But no one has been able to pinpoint exactly how they sense it," said Shawn Xu, a faculty member at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute and senior author of the study. "Now, I think we have an answer."
When environmental temperatures drop to uncomfortable, and even dangerous levels, receptor proteins within the sensory nerves in the skin perceive the change, and they relay that information to the brain. This is true for organisms from humans all the way down to the tiny, millimeter-long worms that researchers study in Xu's lab at the Life Sciences Institute: the model system
Caenorhabditis elegans.
"When you step outside and you sense it's too cold, you're going to take action to get back to a warmer environment as soon as you can," said Xu, who is also a professor in the U-M Medical School's Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology. "When the worms sense cold, they also engage in avoidance behavior — moving away from cold temperatures, just like humans."
But unlike humans or other complex organisms,
C. elegans have a simple, well-mapped genome and a short lifespan, making them a valuable model system for studying sensory responses.
Comment: It would appear new species and the rediscovery of presumed extinct species is occurring fairly often, meanwhile there's a collapse in other realms of the animal kingdon: