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Resources » Paper

Asher D Cutter et al. (2002) West Coast Worm Meeting "Assaying C. elegans sex ratio in natural populations"

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    Publication type:
    Meeting_abstract
    WormBase ID:
    WBPaper00016773

    Asher D Cutter, & Sarah E McCarthy (2002). Assaying C. elegans sex ratio in natural populations presented in West Coast Worm Meeting. Unpublished information; cite only with author permission.

    C. elegans natural populations are comprised of self-fertilizing hermaphrodites and an unknown, but presumably small, percentage of males. Males arise as a consequence of rare X-chromosome non-disjunction events during meiosis in hermaphrodites or via outcrossing with males (Hodgkin, Horvitz, and Brenner 1979). Laboratory studies have identified variation among wild-caught strains in X-chromosome non-disjunction rates and male reproductive success (Hodgkin and Doniach 1997). However, like much of C. elegans ecology and natural history, the incidence of males and of outcrossing in natural populations remains unknown. We are working to address the question of sex ratio in natural populations by developing a molecular approach to assay male frequency. Our method utilizes semi-quantitative rtPCR to describe the abundance of a male-specific mRNA transcript relative to a control transcript that is expressed in both sexes. We are currently (1) constructing a standard curve of relative expression levels from lab samples of known sex ratio, from which we will be able to infer the frequency of males in unknown laboratory or natural samples, and (2) ascertaining the species specificity of the primers that we are employing in this method.


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