Worm Breeder's Gazette 12(3): 11a (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.

Esterase Expression Patterns in Wild Nematode Species

Guofeng Xie, Latha Ravi, Eric Aamodt

Dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Louisiana State University Medical Center-Shreveport 71130-3932

Jim McGhee's laboratory has previously shown that early esterase expression is gut specific in both C. elegans and C. briggsae. To learn whether early esterase expression is gut specific in other nematode species, we stained the embryos from various wild nematode species and various species obtained from the C. elegans Stock Center for esterase activity by the method of Edgar and McGhee (Dev. Biol. 114:109). We observed remarkably diverse patterns of esterase activity including gut specific expression as in C. elegans (four species including C. remanei and gut and pharynx expression (eight species including Panagrellus redivivus). The gut and pharynx expression was similar to the expression pattern of the major C. elegans esterase gene ( ges-1 )that has had all but 1220 bp of its upstream noncoding sequences deleted (see Aamodt et al. (1991) Science 252:579). The wild isolates were stained throughout their pharynges while the deleted ges-1 constructs are expressed only in the MS-lineage pharynx cells. Nine species were stained throughout the animal. Two species stained in spots throughout the animal and one species stained in apparently random spots similar to the expression pattern of the ges-1 gene that has had all but 470 bp of upstream noncoding sequence deleted. Apparently, early esterase expression is not gut specific in many other nematode species but rather changes in the pattern of esterase expression have occurred frequently during nematode evolution.

Literature Cited:

Edgar and McGhee (Dev. Biol. 114:109)

Aamodt et al. (1991) Science 252:579