Worm Breeder's Gazette 2(2): 12c
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.
Preliminary characterization of fifteen male-rescuable ts steriles by Nomarski observation and Feulgen staining allows classification by several different criteria. Hermaphrodites raised at the restrictive temperature (25 ) may have: 1) almost no sperm; 2) few sperm which appear abnormal under Nomarski and have uncondensed nuclei in Feulgen staining; 3) reduced numbers of normal-looking sperm, ranging from approximately 10% to 50% of wild-type sperm count, depending on the particular mutant; and 4) almost twice the wildtype sperm count (one mutant). In some mutants the unfertilized oocytes do not seem to continue to synthesize DNA as do N2 unfertilized oocytes, and retain pale discrete nuclei with Feulgen staining. While some mutants lay unfertilized oocytes and others do not, this does not seem correlated with the type of oocyte produced. tcrits generally coincide with the time of spermatogenesis, 20-50 hours. Fertile males have been found for several mutants; in others the males seem sterile even at 16 C. For males of three mutants, the sperm defect is ts reversible. Males raised at 25 C begin to produce cross progeny about 20-24 hours after being mated at 16 C. A fourth mutant, one of the abnormal sperm producers, is not reversible.