Here, our results demonstrated that the daf-2/daf-16 signaling pathway now joins this relatively small number of SMA disease phenotype modifiers, such as plastin 3 (Oprea et al., 2008), RhoA/ROCK (Coque et al., 2014), and four genes in C. elegans (ncbp-2, T02G5.3, grk-2, and flp-4; Dimitriadi et al., 2010). Here, PLS3 is linked to proximal spinal muscular atrophy.