Figure 1. Expression of homeobox genes in the AIY interneuron class. (A) Overlap of a DIC and a fluorescent image showing expression of a
ttx-3full::gfp reporter gene construct (schematically shown in part B) in the nucleus of several head neurons of an early L2 stage animal. The fluorescent images were taken in several optical sections and layered upon each other. In this animal (genotype: otEx57) comparably strong expression can be seen in AIY, AIA, ADL and ASI. Within a population, 41/41 otEx57 animals show strong expression in AIY and 39/41 show expression in AIA, 28/41 in ADL and 25/41 in ASI. Similar patterns of expression can be seen with a total of 12 independently obtained extrachromosomal arrays (otEx45-otEx49, otEx57 and otEx97-otEx101). Pharyn. n., pharyngeal neuron. (B) Schematic representation of the expression constructs used.
ttx-3resc rescues the thermotaxis phenotype of
ttx-3 mutant animals (Hobert et al., 1997),
ttx-3prom::gfp reveals postembryonic expression exclusively in the AIY interneuron class (Hobert et al., 1997),
ttx-3full::gfp expression is shown in A. (C) Schematic representation of the expression of
ceh-10::lacZ (Svendsen and McGhee, 1995),
ttx-3full::gfp (this study) and
ceh-23::gfp (Forrester et al., 1998) reporter constructs in the C. elegans nervous system. Expression in neurons of the tail ganglia is not shown. The name of neurons in which expression of any of the three genes overlaps is bold and underlined.