Hold Your Nerve

Scientists often find clues to human life inside simpler but similar organisms like the nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans (C.elegans). Here researchers use a high-powered microscope to map out the patterns of two important structural proteins called spectrins (highlighted in green) inside the tails of two C.elegans. They find that some of the spectrin, located on the outer membranes of the worm’s cells, forms a scaffold to support its nervous system, a bit like cable clips holding electrical wires against a wall (but ~10,000 times smaller). The development of new nerves prompts the scaffolds to form, even after injury. Researchers suggest that spectrins help to stabilise the nervous system in nematodes, providing hints at how disrupted human spectrins may contribute to neurological disorders.

Written by John Ankers

• Image from work by Sean Coakley and colleagues
• School of Biomedical Sciences and Clem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research, Queensland Brain Institute, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
• Published in Science Advances, January 2026