"We show that genes of the classical apoptosis pathway are involved in the smn-1-mediated neuronal death and that this phenotype can be rescued by the expression of human SMN1 indicating a functional conservation between the two orthologs. Finally we determined that Plastin3/plst-1 genetically interacts with smn-1 to prevent degeneration and that treatment with valproic acid is able to rescue the degenerative phenotype"xsd:string