Volatile scents of moss Ceratodon purpureus show sex-specific differences and are similar in chemical diversity to those of plant–insect pollination mutualisms; and moss-dwelling microarthropods, whose presence increases C. purpureus fertilization rates, prefer scents of reproductive female C. purpureus to reproductive males, indicating a scent-based ‘plant–pollinator-like’ relationship between mosses and microarthropods.

Lrp4 acts bidirectionally and coordinates synapse formation by binding agrin, activating MuSK and stimulating postsynaptic differentiation, and functioning in turn as a muscle-derived retrograde signal that is necessary and sufficient for presynaptic differentiation.

Double-stranded RNA interference (RNAi) in Caenorhabditis elegans is heritable; here a genetic screen for factors required for RNAi inheritance identifies the nuclear-localized Argonaute gene hrde-1, which acts in the germ cells of progeny to promote multigenerational inheritance of silencing and, also, germline immortality.