Worm Breeder's Gazette 2(1): 13
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.
We have been collecting roller mutants and examining their characteristics. The roller phenotype can be more or less severe. Mildly afflicted animals merely lift their heads occasionally. In its most severe form however, the mutant animals do not roll at all, they appear almost normal but are squat in body shape and have tread alterations. This continuum of phenotypes appears to manifest itself in gene dosage effects and the intensity of the phenotype appears to be a function of age. For example, severe mutants (squat), generate regular rollers as heterozygotes; the dauer larvae of squat mutants roll; some strong regular rollers are semi-dominant, the heterozygotes being head lifters; a double roller mutant (E187.E489) has a squat phenotype although dauer larvae roll. These observations may suggest that the roller phenotype affects some sort of phase shift in cuticle structure with the most severe mutants (squat) being a full octave out of alignment. All the roller mutants so far examined are mutant in one of five genes; dpy-2 rol-2, w gene rol-4 located on one of the arms of LG-5. All are left-handed except for the alleles of dpy-2 which are right-handed. The squats ( seven isolates) map to various sites on LG-2 and generate right-handed roller heterozygotes.