Too Hot, Too Cold, Just Worm

Show notes

Welcome to the next episode of The Worm Podcast 🔬

We usually think of sensory neurons as the cells that detect the world, while glia sit behind the scenes supporting them.

This paper turns that idea on its head.

Researchers show that AMsh glial cells can detect temperature themselves — independently sensing both heat and cold — and then helping the nervous system decide how the worm should respond.

🔥 Glia can feel the heat

When temperature rises, AMsh glia respond through GCY-28, a guanylyl cyclase that acts as a heat sensor.

Removing GCY-28 largely eliminates the glial response to warming. Put it back specifically into the glia and that response returns.

Even more strikingly, expressing GCY-28 in another cell type can give that cell a new response to heat.

❄️ And they can sense cold too

The same glial cells also contain GLR-3, which acts as a cold sensor.

So one glial cell can independently detect movement in both directions on the thermometer.

The researchers even isolated AMsh glia from the worm and showed that individual cells still responded to heating and cooling.

That is important.

The glia are not simply reacting to signals arriving from neighbouring neurons.

They are sensory cells in their own right.

🧠 A hub between hot and cold

Detecting temperature is only half the story.

AMsh glia then release GABA and influence two established thermosensory neurons in different ways.

They enhance the warm-sensitive AFD neuron through the excitatory GABA receptor EXP-1.

At the same time, they suppress prolonged cold signalling from the ASH neuron through the inhibitory receptor LGC-38.

The authors describe this as a hub-and-spoke circuit.

One glial hub senses the environment and then adjusts different neuronal pathways depending on what is happening.

🌡️ Changing what the worm actually does

Manipulating these glia altered:

• hot and cold avoidance
• tolerance to extreme temperatures
• thermotaxis
• temperature preference

So this is not simply an interesting calcium signal under a microscope.

Glial temperature sensing changes whole-animal behaviour.

🔬 Why this matters

Glia are increasingly being recognised as active participants in nervous systems rather than passive support cells.

This study pushes that idea further.

If glial cells can directly detect environmental information, integrate it and modify nearby sensory circuits, then some of the computation we normally attribute to neurons may actually begin before the neuronal network itself.

And there are intriguing parallels beyond worms, because mammalian glia and other non-neuronal cells also express temperature-sensitive receptors.

🧠 The take-home message

The worm does not sense temperature with neurons alone.

Its glia can independently detect hot and cold, integrate those signals and tune the surrounding neural circuit.

Sometimes the cells we thought were supporting the conversation are actually part of it.

📄 Paper discussed

Linhui Zhu, Rong Li, Mengyi Qian, Fangjin Lv, Huitao Hong, Yumeng Li, Yongqi Zhou, Zhou Li, Jing Lei, Wenjuan Zou, Min-Xin Guan, Yongming Zhang, Guohua Zhao, Huan Ma, Jianke Gong and Lijun Kang (2026)

A Glial Hub-and-Spoke Circuitry in C. elegans orchestrates bidirectional thermosensation

Nature Communications, 17:1899

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68766-w

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📧 veeren.chauhan@nottingham.ac.uk