Plenefisch JD et al. (1994) Worm Breeder's Gazette "Cloning mua-3: Some Observations on the New Molecular Era"

Plenefisch JD, Hedgecock EM

[Worm Breeder's Gazette, 1994]

Cloning mua-3: some observations on the new Molecular Era John Plenefisch and Edward Hedgecock, Dept. of Biology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD 21218

Parham C et al. (1994) Worm Breeder's Gazette "Tc4 and Tc5: What Makes Them Move and Why It Matters"

Beinhorn J, Collins JJ, Butze K, Parham C

[Worm Breeder's Gazette, 1994]

Tc4 and Tc5: what makes them move and why it matters Christi Parham, Kristie Butze, Joanna Beinhorn and John Collins. Dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of New Hampshire. Durham, NH 03824

Almeida CA et al. (1994) Worm Breeder's Gazette "Function of a Domain of the Myosin Heavy Chain Implicated in Familial Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy"

Collins JJ, Almeida CA, Swift KE

[Worm Breeder's Gazette, 1994]

Function of a Domain of the Myosin Heavy Chain Implicated in Familial Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Craig A. Almeida, Kerry E. Swift and John J. Collins Department of Biochemistry and Molecular, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03820

Maine EM et al. (1994) Worm Breeder's Gazette "Mutations That Enhance glp-1 Identify Genes Required For Various Aspects of Germline Development."

Gelber MB, Smardon AM, Shu P, Qiao L, Maine EM, Lissemore JL

[Worm Breeder's Gazette, 1994]

Mutations that enhance glp-1 identify genes required for various aspects of germline development. Eleanor Maine, Li Qiao, Jim Lissemore-, Pei Shu, Anne Smardon, and Melanie Gelber. Biology Dept., Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244 and Biology Dept., John Carroll University, Cleveland, OH 44118.

Adams A (1999) Worm Breeder's Gazette "Philadelphia's Northeast High School Worm Project experiment on the space shuttle Discovery"

Adams A

[Worm Breeder's Gazette, 1999]

We recently had a chance to do something only a handful of people have ever done: send an experiment up into space. We sent up an 'experimental' group of dauer larvae on the space shuttle Discovery's ten-day mission. ITA of Exton, PA, granted us a very small space on the shuttle. So we decided on the relatively small C. elegans. We figured since John Glenn was going up into space to see the effects on him, we'd do a similar study. We wanted to see if the conditions of space had any effect on the C. elegans normal 18-24 day life span. With every science experiment there is a control group and an experimental group. The control group of about 1000 worms stayed in Philadelphia at Northeast High School the other 1000 worms were blasted off into orbit October 29, 1998.

Greenwald IS (1984) Worm Breeder's Gazette "progress in cloning lin-12."

Greenwald IS

[Worm Breeder's Gazette, 1984]

I have been using two strategies to clone the lin-12 locus. The first strategy has been to 'walk' from eP7, a restriction fragment length polymorphism (see map and last Newsletter). To date, I have walked some 100 kb in John Sulston's cosmid library (with the invaluable assistance of John Sulston and Alan Coulson), but I have not yet oriented these clones with respect to the genetic map. The second strategy has been to look for lin-12 null mutations ['lin-12(0)'] in a Bergerac genetic background, with the hope (based on the suggestive genetic phenomenology described by Scott Emmons and coworkers and Don Moerman) that Tc1 transposition would be responsible for some of these mutations. To facilitate the isolation of lin-12(0) alleles, I constructed a strain that was predominantly Bergerac but containing the lin-12(n137) mutation: n137/n137 hermaphrodites are egg-laying defective, but some n137/lin-12(0) hermaphrodites lay eggs, which are easy to spot. I isolated six revertants in the initial search; three from animals grown at 20 C and three from animals treated at 27 C for 18 hours then grown at 20 C. (The frequency seems to be lower than that seen with EMS, but higher than the spontaneous Bristol rate). To see if any of these lin-12(0) mutants were associated with a Tc1 transposition event, I placed them in a Bristol background (to eliminate most of the Tc1's from Bergerac) by a backcross regime that included a three-factor cross. DNA's from the backcrossed strains were digested with several restriction enzymes and Southern blots were probed with Tc1. One revertant, lin-12(n137e1979), obtained after heat-shock treatment, had a novel 2.9 kb band in the HindIII digest; further mapping showed that this band is tightly linked to lin-12.

Donmoyer JE et al. (1984) Worm Breeder's Gazette "a comparison of the retrovesicular ganglion in Ascaris lumbriciodes and C elegans."

Stretton AOW, Donmoyer JE, Angstadt JD

[Worm Breeder's Gazette, 1984]

The anatomy of the nervous system of the large parasitic nematode Ascaris des is similar in many respects to the nervous system of C. elegans. An adult Ascaris can be as large as 30 cm and weigh 10 grams while a typical C. elegans may be 1 mm long and weigh a few micrograms. Yet, both worms have about the same number of neurons. In addition, the nerve cells are arranged in the same basic pattern throughout the animals and many of the neurons have similar shapes in the two worms. It has been known for some time, for example, that motorneurons in the two animals have identical shapes and make similar synaptic connections. On the other hand, homologies between interneurons in the two species have been less clear. In order to compare different classes of neurons more fully, we have examined the anatomy of the retrovesicular ganglion (RVG) of Ascaris, which contains both interneurons and motorneurons. We find that each RVG cell in Ascaris appears to have a homolog in the RVG of C. elegans. The homologies are based on the unpublished reconstructions of head neurons by John White. [see Figure 1]

Yasuda H et al. (1990) Worm Breeder's Gazette "Trans-splicing in Tubulin?"

Siddiqui SS, Yasuda H

[Worm Breeder's Gazette, 1990]

At the last worm meeting (CSH, 1989), we reported the nucleotide sequence of the alpha-1 tubulin gene AT3 that was cloned by direct screening of a C. elegans cDNA expression library in a lambda gt11 vector (Bob Barstead), using a tubulin specific monoclonal anti-body 3A5 (provided by M. Fuller). This gene was previously identified by Linda Gremke using a chicken tubulin probe (Don Cleveland). Our clone SQ#TbA77 was cytologically mapped on chromosome I of C. elegans (Alan Coulson and John Sulston, MRC, LMB, UK). As Dr. Tom Blumenthal walked by our poster at the meeting, he pointed out the presence of an eight nucleotide non-coding sequence TTCAGGTT, which corresponds to the acceptor sequence of C. elegans in the trans-splicing reaction of mRNA. This is a rather novel feature for the tubulin gene, as the other alpha or beta tubulin genes, from C. elegans or other metazoans have not been reported to be trans-spliced at the mRNA level. We are currently trying to sequence the mRNA to test if this mRNA is indeed spliced. Figure below shows the physical map of the alpha-1 tubulin gene, and the nucleotide sequence showing the acceptor sequence ( marked by arrowed box), in the non-coding sequence of the tubulin gene. [See Figure 1]

Greenwald IS (1984) Worm Breeder's Gazette "molecular cloning of lin-12."

Greenwald IS

[Worm Breeder's Gazette, 1984]

I have examined a total of eight independent lin-12 null mutations that arose spontaneously in a predominantly Bergerac genetic background. I probed genomic Southern blots with a 1.2 kb wild-type HindIII fragment that was defined by an insertion mutation (see last Newsletter) and/or with a cosmid 'contig' obtained from Alan Coulson and John Sulston that extends approximately 20 kb in each direction from the 1.2 kb HindIII fragment. The results thus far indicate that ( 1) seven of the eight mutations are associated with Tc1 insertions (2) the insertions are at different sites, and (3) all the insertion sites may lie within a single Pst fragment that is 2.8 kb in wild-type.

Blumenthal TE et al. (1994) Worm Breeder's Gazette "C. elegans U2AF 65."

Zorio DAR, Lea K, Blumenthal TE

[Worm Breeder's Gazette, 1994]

C. elegans U2AF65