Worm Breeder's Gazette 14(1): 75 (October 1, 1995)
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.
#Department of Neurology, and +Verna and Marrs McLean Department of Biochemistry, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA
The expression of the C. elegans glyoxylate cycle protein (GCP) was studied by a combination of immunofluorescence microscopy, immunblotting, and Northern blot hybridization. The expression pattern was found to be continued mainly in intestine and body-wall muscles in both larvae and adults, similar to that in embryos (Liu et. al., Dev. Biol. 167, 399-414, 1995). Immunoblotting showed that the GCP level increased in embryogenesis, reached high level in L1 stage larvae, and then declined to a more or less constant level during development. The GCP mRNA expression pattern was similar to that of the protein, except for a relatively high level in early embryos. The GCP expression was also found to be induced by fasting in both L1 and later stages of larvae. However, there was no significant change of the GCP levels in the heterochronic lin-4 (lf) and lin-14 (gf) mutants compared to the N2 wild type. We conclude that the C. elegans GCP expression is spatiotemporally regulated, and is independent of the heterochronic lin-14 control mechanism. We propose that the increase of GCP expression during embryogenesis, its decrease during larval development, and its increase due to fasting in C. elegans may be related to induction by fat catabolism and repression by carbohydrates as shown in bacterial and fungal organisms.