Early Worms

The first few moments of a worm's life are a difficult time. Egg and sperm, which come together to create a new worm baby, are very different cells and their DNA is packaged up in distinctive ways. And the challenge is unpacking it and organising it all so that development can get started. This biological packaging material – proteins called histones – comes in various varieties, and special versions are put onto the DNA in eggs and sperm when they're made. Here we see the developing sperm inside a male worm, stained with fluorescent dyes that pick out different histones. Immature sperm are tightly packed together and stained pink due to one type of histone, but this is replaced with the green-stained version as they mature. These special histones could play an important role in shaping development, carrying extra information from mum and dad to the embryo.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

Writer

Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image by Diana Chu and colleagues
• San Francisco State University
• Originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Research published in PLOS Genetics, October 2014