The primary structure of histone H2A from the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Vanfleteren JR
PROVIDER: S-EPMC1147849 | biostudies-other | 1987 Apr
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other
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Project description:Durotaxis is a process where cells are able to sense the stiffness of substrates and preferentially migrate toward stiffer regions. Here, we show that the 1-mm-long nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans are also able to detect the rigidity of underlying substrates and always migrate to regions of higher stiffness. Our results indicate that C. elegans are able to judiciously make a decision to stay on stiffer regions. We found that the, undulation frequency, and wavelength of worms, crawling on surfaces show nonmonotonic behavior with increasing stiffness. A number of control experiments were also conducted to verify whether C. elegans are really able to detect the rigidity of substrates or whether the migration to stiffer regions is due to other factors already reported in the literature. As it is known that bacteria and other single-celled organisms exhibit durotaxis toward stiffer surfaces, we conjecture that durotaxis in C. elegans may be one of the strategies developed to improve their chances of locating food.
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Project description:BackgroundThe nematode Caenorhabditis elegans was the first multicellular organism to have its genome fully sequenced. Over the last 10 years since the original publication in 1998, the C. elegans genome has been scrutinized and the last gaps were filled in November 2002, which present a unique opportunity for examining genome-wide segmental duplications.ResultsHere, we performed analysis of the C. elegans genome in search for segmental duplications using a new tool -- OrthoCluster -- we have recently developed. We detected 3,484 duplicated segments -- duplicons -- ranging in size from 234 bp to 108 Kb. The largest pair of duplicons, 108 kb in length located on the left arm of Chromosome V, was further characterized. They are nearly identical at the DNA level (99.7% identity) and each duplicon contains 26 putative protein coding genes. Genotyping of 76 wild-type strains obtained from different labs in the C. elegans community revealed that not all strains contain this duplication. In fact, only 29 strains carry this large segmental duplication, suggesting a very recent duplication event in the C. elegans genome.ConclusionThis report represents the first demonstration that the C. elegans laboratory wild-type N2 strains has acquired large-scale differences.
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2009-07-02 | GSE16915 | GEO
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