[
WormBook,
2007]
The intestine is one of the major organs in C. elegans and is largely responsible for food digestion and assimilation as well as the synthesis and storage of macromolecules. In addition, the intestine is emerging as a powerful experimental system in which to study such universal biological phenomena as vesicular trafficking, biochemical clocks, stress responses and aging. The present chapter describes some of these many and varied properties of the C. elegans intestine: the embryonic cell lineage, intestine morphogenesis, structure and physiology of the intestinal cell and, finally, the transcription factor network controlling intestine development and function.
[
1987]
We describe an experimental system in which to study gene-specific segregation mechanisms during early development of C. elegans. A non-specific esterase, of unknown physiological function, has convenient properties as a biochemical marker of differentiation: expression is localized to the gut lineage, is due to transcription during zygotic development and is lineage autonomous. The timing of esterase expression does not depend either on the normal number of rounds of cytokinesis or on the normal number of rounds of DNA replication; thus some other clock mechanism must be invoked. We descrbe experiments suggesting that DNA strands donated by the sperm do not co-segregate during development of the next generation.
[
1987]
We describe the use of a nonspecific carboxylesterase as a biochemical marker for intestinal differentiation in the nematode C. elegans. In particular, we describe how esterase expression responds to inhibition of embryonic DNA synthesis by aphidicolin. Esterase expression requires a short period of DNA synthesis immediattely after the gut lineage is clonally established. However, the subsequent 2-3 rounds of DNA synthesis, which normally occur before esterase gene transcription, can be inhibited without effect. Thus esterase expression depends neither on reaching the normal DNA:cytoplasmic ration nor on counting the normal number of replication rounds.