The egl-27 reporter is expressed in the Y cell in the 1.5-fold embryonic stage as well as during the L1 larval stage, which precedes the initiation of Y transdifferentiation.
At the mid-L2 stage, the VD neurons form synapses (Hallam and Jin, 1998; Kurup and Jin, 2015; Sulston, 1976), and KIN-20 expression is identical in DD and VD cell bodies. At the L2 stage, KIN-20 is also highly expressed in the nuclei of epidermal cells and is visible in the nuclei of motor neurons. Expression tends to peak at the end of each larval stage, consistent with expression of other heterochronic genes (Rhodehouse et al., 2018).