Degrade to create:: developmental requirements for ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis during early C-elegans embryogenesis

The ubiquitin protein conjugation system tags proteins with the small polypeptide ubiquitin. Most poly-ubiquitinated proteins are recognized and degraded by the proteasome, a large multi-subunit protease. Ubiquitin-dependent protein degradation is used as a regulatory tool for many essential processes, the best studied of which is eukaryotic cell cycle progression. More recently, genetic studies in C elegans have identified multiple roles for the ubiquitin system in early development, where ubiquitin-dependent protein degradation governs such diverse events as passage through meiosis, cytoskeletal regulation and cell fate determination.