Worm Breeder's Gazette 13(1): 92 (October 1, 1993)

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.

Glutathione reductase may be unc-32 .

Nathalie Pujol

CNRS-CRBM, Montpellier, France.
email: nat@kaa.cnrs-mop.fr

Transformation with now 3 different plasmids allows us to define a short region of 4.5 kb in the ZK637 cosmid which rescues unc-32 .This region read in the sequencing project and analysed with Genefinder is potentially encoding a product highly homologous to the human and E. coli glutathione reductase gene.

We are now sequencing the different alleles in this gene. We are expecting point mutations or microdeletions because we didn't see any polymorphism on Southern analyses. We already saw 3 times a possible point mutation in the e189 uncoordinated allele. This mutation would turn a C into a G, thereby an alanine into a glycine, in the active site, where the glutathione is reduced. This mutation has yet to be confirmed by sequencing the other strand.

Uncoordinated alleles of unc-32 are ventral coilers as adults when they move backward but L1 larvae move normally. This would suggest that motoneurones generated at the L1 stage are defective. In view of the recent results involving the superoxide dismutase in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in man, it would be of great interest if a glutathione reductase was also implicated in motoneurones functioning.