Worm Breeder's Gazette 8(3): 87
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.
Using a Tc1 transposon tagging procedure we have cloned the unc-22 gene (WBC 8:2) and 50kb of DNA in the unc-22 region. This includes DNA from over 20 lambda clones and 2 cosmid clones provided by J. Sulston. The deficiency sDf19 has a breakpoint within unc-22 (T. Rogalski, personal communication) and was used to confirm that we had isolated DNA from unc-22 and also to orientate the lambda clones relative to the genetic map. We have examined 14 spontaneous twitchers isolated in Bergerac B0 and in all 14, a 1.6kb insertion, presumably Tc1, is present in the region cloned. These inserts occur at multiple sites in unc-22. The limited restriction mapping done so far resolves these elements into at least 10 sites spanning about 20kb. Two spontaneous mutations, st136 and st137, which map to the central region of unc-22 and have identical morphological phenotypes have been shown by cloning to be Tc1 elements inserted about 40bp apart in opposite orientations.