Worm Breeder's Gazette 5(2): 31

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.

Analysis of Proteins from Larvae and Adults of C. elegans

J. Starck, C. Bosch

Extracts from larvae and adults were prepared using different 
methods:  Animals were resuspended in buffer and homogenized either 
with a dounce, in a mortar with an equal weight of powdered glass or 
by sonication.  The fourth method involved direct treatment of the 
animals for 10 min at 100 C in the presence of SDS and  -
mercaptoethanol.  After centrifugation to remove large debris, the 
suspension (with addition of supplementary  -mercaptoethanol in the 
last method) was analyzed on a polyacrylamide gradient (3.75 to 15 %) 
in the presence of urea and SDS.  After electrophoresis, proteins were 
stained with Coomassie blue.  We observed some variations in the 
protein pattern depending on the technique used for solubilization.  
Patterns allowing comparison of adults and larvae were best obtained 
when sonication was employed to disrupt the animals.  Under such 
conditions, two high molecular weights (> 100,000 daltons) bands are 
present in adults but never in larvae.  These bands look similar to 
the one found by Klass et al.  (Dev.  Biol., 1979, 69, 329-335) using 
labelled polypeptides.  Caracterization of these two polypeptides is 
in progress.