Yinan Li, a graduate student at UChicago, wants to understand how transcription factors work through the study of C. elegans. Under Paschalis Kratsios, PhD, at the Kratsios Lab, they showed how a certain terminal selector was responsible in part for assuring a young neuron stayed on the right developmental path as it established its own identity. But in their most recent paper, Li and Kratsios showed that UNC-3 took on a much different function, maintaining mature neurons that supported movement in the worm.