Figure 3.

Proposed model for the interaction of ROP-1 with components of the dauer formation pathway. ROP-1 modulates the activity of components in both the daf-2 and daf-7 pathways to influence dauer formation signaling. Favorable growth conditions allow a signal from daf-2 (and maybe also daf-7) to activate an aspartic proteinase. This proteinase in turn catalyses the processing of ROP-1, which relieves its influence on both signaling pathways. This processing allows ROP-1 to perform another set of activities, possibly also related to RNA degradation as part of its RNA quality control function(s).