Worm Breeder's Gazette 12(3): 106 (June 15, 1992)
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.
The rol-3 (V)gene of Caenorhabditis elegans was previously defined by the single recessive visible mutation, e754 .Cox (1980) demonstrated that the rolling phenotype associated with e754 is not manifest until after the L4 molt, subsequent to the formation of adult cuticle. In an attempt to determine whether or not the visible phenotype of e754 is dependant on the presence of an adult cuticle, we have studied the interaction between rol-3 ( e754 )and the heterochronic mutant lin-29 ( n1440 ).Loss of function lin-29 alleles fail to produce an adult cuticle. Therefore, we expected suppression of the rolling phenotype in rol-3 ( e754 ); lin-29 ( n1440 )double mutants if the rolling phenotype is dependant on the presence of an adult cuticle. All such doubly mutant worms roll as adults suggesting that the rol-3 product does not function directly within the adult cuticle. Consistent with this finding is our ability to isolate early larval lethal alleles of rol-3 .In order to gain insight on the function of rol-3 ,we sought to generate inter-genic suppressors of the rol-3 ( s1 O40ts)lethal phenotype. As previously noted (see WBG 11 4, and WBG 12 1) these suppressors fall into two complementation groups, srl-1 (II)and srl-2 (III).Hermaphrodites homozygous for srl- display no obvious phenotype in the absence of rol-3 ( s1 O40);however, males display abnormal tail morphology. Our preliminary results suggest that srl-2 may be allelic to mab-5 ,and we are currently testing mab-9 and mab-10 for allelism to srl-1 .Figure 1 displays the complementation results observed between the various alleles of srl-1 and srl-2 .As indicated, srl-2 ( s2506 )fails to complement all other srl- alleles tested. The complex genetic interactions observed between the srl-1 and srl-2 locus suggest that srl-1 and srl-2 may encode functionally related gene products, and that these genes may be members of the same gene family.