Worm Breeder's Gazette 10(2): 101
These abstracts should not be cited in bibliographies. Material contained herein should be treated as personal communication and should be cited as such only with the consent of the author.
We have obtained a line of worms that carry an unstable (presumed extrachromosomal) array of a plasmid containing the act-4 5' and 3' regions fused to the E. coli lacZ coding region. The transformed animals were originally detected by DNA dot blot hybridization and we are now characterizing their expression of -galactosidase. Preliminary experiments show that embryos, larvae and adults all express -galactosidase. Although tissue specificity of expression has not been accurately determined yet, it appears that many tissues in the adult express the enzyme. We have been attempting to use the transformants ability to cleave X-Gal and turn blue as a possible screen to recognize worms expressing -galactosidase. Worms are permeabilized in the presence of X-Gal and are screened under the dissecting scope with reflected light. Non-transformed animals remain clear under these conditions, but a fraction of the transformed animals stain blue. Progeny from the blue worms contain the foreign DNA as assayed by DNA dot blot. We are now trying to improve the permeabilization and staining procedure to get a more reliable screen for the transformed animals.