Worm Breeder's Gazette 5(2): 17
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 done several experiments to compare cuticle proteins of the Bergerac Strain of C. elegans with those of the Bristol Strain. These experiments were undertaken to determine if the cuticle proteins of the two variants had electrophoretic differences which could be exploited to map genes coding for cuticle proteins. Since Bergerac dauers are not resistant to SDS, it was necessary to obtain relatively synchronous adults grown from L1 juveniles obtained by filtration through 5 nylon mesh screens. The cuticle proteins from adults of both strains were subjected to 2-dimensional gel electrophoresis using the techniques of O'Farrell. The gel patterns obtained are virtually identical in the two strains. This result suggests that the collagens which make up these animal's cuticles are well conserved proteins and may imply rigid structural constraints on the composition of these molecules.