Worm Breeder's Gazette 7(2): 33

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.

Wild and Woolly Strains

J. Rand, C. Johnson, D. Russell

Figure 1

During the last 10 years, our lab has been accumulating wild 
isolates of nematodes from soil samples.  We have sent some of them to 
a number of labs, and we are now sending all of them to the CGC for 
distribution to one and all.  We expect that these will be of use to 
those people interested in enzyme polymorphisms, DNA polymorphisms, 
developmental and behavioral variants, and dysgenesis, to say nothing 
of population genetics and nematode taxonomy.  Knowledge about many of 
these strains is sketchy, but what we do know is summarized below.
[See Figure 1]
The following strains are known to be interfertile with C.  elegans (
Bristol): CL2a, all the GA strains, HA8, all the PA strains, and PaC1. 
The following strains have been tested for interfertility with N2 
males without apparent success: FU2, FU4, HA1-7, PG1-3.  All of the 
strains are monoecious.  None of the strains has (to our knowledge) 
been tested for interfertility with C.  briggsae.
All strains from any one location (i.e., bearing the same letter 
designation) cannot be guaranteed to be independent of each other, 
although some of them probably are.  It is also remotely possible that 
some of the GA strains may, in fact, be laboratory strains which Carl 
inadvertently brought home to his garden.  (However, Scott Emmons has 
data showing independence of at least several of the GA strains.) We 
request that anyone obtaining data (protein, DNA, behavioral, etc.) 
bearing on the independence or lack of same for any strains send their 
conclusions to the CGC, so that other users of these strains can 
design their experiments accordingly.

Figure 1