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A wax ester promotes collective host finding in the nematode Pristionchus pacificus

Nature Chemical Biology volume 10, pages 281–285 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Survival of nematode species depends on how successfully they disperse in the habitat and find a new host. As a new strategy for collective host finding in the nematode Pristionchus pacificus, dauer larvae synthesize an extremely long-chain polyunsaturated wax ester (nematoil) that covers the surface of the animal. The oily coat promotes congregation of up to one thousand individuals into stable 'dauer towers' that can reach a beetle host more easily.

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Figure 1: Dauer towers formed by P. pacificus for collective host finding.
Figure 2: Hydrophobic interaction mediates the adhesion of dauer larvae.
Figure 3: Secreted surface lipids facilitate dauer tower formation.
Figure 4: A very long-chain polyunsaturated wax ester specific for the dauer stage is a major compound of the surface lipid coat.

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Change history

  • 19 March 2014

    In the version of this article initially published online, the legend to Figure 4c describing step e incorrectly stated that 1 equiv. 3 was added when it should have been 1 equiv. 2. The error has been corrected for the HTML version of this article.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all members of the Kurzchalia, Sommer and Knölker labs for helpful discussions. We are grateful to J. Saenz for proofreading the manuscript. We thank the Caenorhabditis Genetics Center for providing C. elegans strains. Work in the Knölker laboratory was supported by the European Science Foundation EuroMembrane Network (DFG grant KN 240/13-1). We thank R. Czerwonka for her experimental support in the synthesis of nematoil and J. Sampaio and O. Lavrynenko for their assistance in MS.

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Author notes

  1. Sider Penkov and Akira Ogawa: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany

    Sider Penkov, Vyacheslav Zagoriy, Sebastian Boland, Daniela Vorkel, Jean-Marc Verbavatz & Teymuras V Kurzchalia

  2. Department for Evolutionary Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany

    Akira Ogawa, Dhananjay Tate & Ralf J Sommer

  3. Laboratory for Developmental Dynamics, RIKEN Quantitative Biology Center, Kobe, Japan

    Akira Ogawa

  4. Department of Chemistry, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany

    Ulrike Schmidt, Margit Gruner & Hans-Joachim Knölker

Authors
  1. Sider Penkov
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Contributions

S.P. and A.O. performed phenotypic and microscopy studies; S.P. performed lipid analysis; A.O. performed the genetic screen; U.S. performed organic synthesis; D.T. performed the experiments with insect host organisms; V.Z. and S.B. performed MS analysis; M.G. and U.S. performed NMR analysis; D.V. performed the electron microscopy studies; S.P., A.O., R.J.S., H.-J.K. and T.V.K. conceived the project and wrote the paper; S.P., A.O., J.-M.V., U.S., M.G., H.-J.K., R.J.S. and T.V.K. designed the experiments; all of the authors discussed the results.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Hans-Joachim Knölker or Teymuras V Kurzchalia.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Text and Figures

Supplementary Results, Supplementary Note, Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Figures 1–24. (PDF 6443 kb)

Supplementary Video 1

Collective waving of P. pacificus dauer larvae as a dauer tower (AVI 8181 kb)

Supplementary Video 2

P. pacificus dauer larvae secrete surface lipids. (AVI 591 kb)

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Penkov, S., Ogawa, A., Schmidt, U. et al. A wax ester promotes collective host finding in the nematode Pristionchus pacificus. Nat Chem Biol 10, 281–285 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.1460

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