Worm Breeder's Gazette 2(1): 14

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.

Experimental Observations: Sterile and Lethal Temperature-sensitive Mutants in C. elegans Bergerac

N. Abdulkader, J. Brun

By EMS treatment, many ts mutants have been obtained (1).  Among 
autosomal mutations, several are multifunctional and pleiotropic.  In 
one class, the mutations affect gonadogenesis and embryogenesis and 
give sterile or lethal worms, according to the stage of development 
which they are exposed to restrictive temperature.  In another class, 
the mutations may affect several stages of gametogenesis, for example, 
by blocking gonial multiplication when newly hatched larvae are 
maintained at 24 C and by preventing the development of spermatozoa 
and oocytes when worms are raised at a restrictive temperature at the 
end of the third larval stage.
A more interesting autosomal ts lethal mutant is actually studied by 
Abdul-Kader.  This mutant exhibits in the temperature range 13 C to 24 
C, a morphological malformation in which the tail instead of being 
filamentous, is spherical.
On the other hand, when these worms are exposed to 20 C during the 
temperature-sensitive lethal period only, the adult mutants are 
considerably shorter, being 2/3 of the length of control worms raised 
at 13 C.
Special genetic studies of this mutant suggest that a single gene is 
responsible for the three phenotypes:  morphological malformation of 
the tail, conditional lethality and temperature-dependent length of 
the worms.