Abstract
Animals evolved in environments with variable nutrient availability and one form of adaptation is the delay of reproduction in food shortage conditions. Belew et al. (2021. J. Cell Biol.https://doi.org/10.1083/jcb.202009197) report that in the nematode C. elegans, starvation-induced transcriptional quiescence in germ cells is achieved through a pathway that combines two well-known chromatin compaction mechanisms.