Worm Breeder's Gazette 11(2): 54
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.
Seven unc-44 cDNA clones were isolated from 2.6 million phage (1.4 million phage screened from the Barstead-Waterston bank, 0.6 million clones each from the Schauer-Wood early embryonic and him-8 embryonic libraries). A 5'-probe (the 9 kb BamHI fragment from cosmid B0350 corresponding to the site of transposon insertion in unc-44(q331) and a 3'-probe (the 3.7-kb SalI fragment from phage DD#LRF1 corresponding to the site of Tc1 insertion in unc-44(rf1042)) were used in combination to screen the libraries. The results are shown below: [See Figure 1] Because of the ease of releasing the plasmid portion of the ZAP II phagemid vector, the characterization of the clones from the Barstead library has progressed further than those from the Schauer library. Although isolated in different screens, clones DD#LA013 and DD#LA045 have identical SstI restriction patterns. DD#LA049, which hybridizes only to the 5' probe, overlaps with DD#LA013 and, assuming the absence of cloning artifacts, predicts a minimum size of 4 kilobases for the unc-44 message (diagrammed below). DNA sequencing of the cDNA clones is currently in progress. [See Figure 1]