Worm Breeder's Gazette 14(2): 73 (February 1, 1996)
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.
Biology Dept., Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08855
We have isolated by PCR a 400-bp fragment of the kinase domain of an apparent C. elegans homologue of the yeast gene STE20, a kinase in the mating pheromone response pathway acting immediately downstream of the G-protein (upstream of the kinase cascade of STE7, STE11 and FUS3/KSS1). This fragment displays an even higher degree of similarity with the mammalian brain kinase p65PAK, which appears to be activated by Cdc42 (Manser et al., 1994). (See figure below.) We are trying to isolate an animal deleted for this gene as well as a full-length cDNA clone. The region containing this gene, which maps to the X chromosome, has recently been sequenced as part of the Genome Project. This gene spans an apparent cosmid gap, but it actually is located over two cosmids that do overlap by 4 kb. The presence of this "gap" plus the difficulty we have had in producing a full-length cDNA clone and in growing the cosmids cause us to think that this DNA sequence may be difficult to grow in E. coli. We would thus be grateful for any assistance with obtaining E. coli strains that will accept these difficult-to-grow sequences. Reference: Manser, E., T. Leung, H. Salihuddin, Z.-s. Zhao and L. Lim. "A brain serine/threonine protein kinase activated by Cdc42 and Rac1." Nature 367: 40-46 (1994). (A figure accompanies the original article.)