The kinase that controls maternal mRNA translation is regulated by phosphorylation of its activating subunit to restrict kinase activity to the developmental window between meiosis completion and early embryogenesis.

The neural circuit that regulates egg-laying behavior in nematode worms is activated by egg production, coupled to the circuit that generates movement, and inhibited by sensory feedback from egg release.

In fruit flies, maternally deposited RNA-binding proteins are removed during the maternal-to-zygotic transition via a mechanism of translational upregulation of Kondo, the key E2 enzyme, at egg activation.

In Aves, the first wave of transcription is derived exclusively from the maternal genome.

The universal bacteria cell wall component peptidoglycan impacts the egg-laying behavior of infected Drosophila females by directly modulating the activity of few brain octopaminergic neurons.

Female fruit flies sense bacteria-derived peptidoglycan via the octopaminergic neurons to adapt their egg laying behavior to their infection status.

The Drosophila PNG kinase controls mRNA translation at the oocyte-to-embryo transition, and its GNU activating subunit is shown here to bind translational repressors and be a component of RNP granules.

Drosophila use distinct sensory mechanisms to detect and integrate the same tactile and taste information in two decision-making tasks that serve two different purposes.

An evolutionarily conserved protein sequence present in diverse species like yeast, frogs, chickens, and humans binds a well-known template for microtubule nucleation, the gamma-tubulin ring complex, activating and enhancing its ability to nucleate microtubules, even under low tubulin concentrations.

Profiling of mRNA poly(A)-tail lengths and translational efficiencies provides new insights into posttranscriptional gene regulation in early Drosophila development.