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Resources » Paper

PL Sadler et al. (1999) International C. elegans Meeting "Anucleate C. elegans sperm can crawl, fertilize oocytes, and direct anterior-posterior polarization of the 1-cell embryo."

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  • Comments on PL Sadler et al. (1999) International C. elegans Meeting "Anucleate C. elegans sperm can crawl, fertilize oocytes, and direct anterior-posterior polarization of the 1-cell embryo." (0)

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    Status:
    Publication type:
    Meeting_abstract
    WormBase ID:
    WBPaper00023597

    PL Sadler, & DC Shakes (1999). Anucleate C. elegans sperm can crawl, fertilize oocytes, and direct anterior-posterior polarization of the 1-cell embryo presented in International C. elegans Meeting. Unpublished information; cite only with author permission.

    Although it has long been appreciated that spermiogenesis, the cellular transformation of spherical haploid spermatids into bipolar, motile spermatozoa, occurs in the absence of new DNA transcription, few studies have addressed whether the physical presence of a sperm nucleus is required either during spermiogenesis or for subsequent sperm functions during egg activation and early zygotic development. To determine the role of the sperm nucleus in these processes, we analyzed two C. elegans mutants whose spermatids lack both nuclei and DNA. Here we show that these anucleate sperm not only differentiate into mature functional spermatozoa, but they can also crawl towards and fertilize oocytes. Furthermore, we show that these anucleate sperm induce both normal egg activation and A-P polarity in the one cell C. elegans embryo. The latter finding demonstrates for the first time that although the anterior-posterior embryonic axis in C. elegans is specified by sperm (Goldstein and Hird, 1996), the sperm nucleus itself is not required. Also unaffected is the completion of oocyte meiosis, the formation of an impermeable eggshell, the process of cytoplasmic rearrangement, and the migration/rotation/centration of the oocyte pronucleus. Our investigation of these mutants confirms that in C. elegans, neither DNA nor a sperm nucleus is required for spermiogenesis, proper egg activation, or the induction of A-P polarity.


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