Project description:According to Mendel's laws, each parent makes an equal genetic contribution to an offspring in sexually reproducing organisms. The bipolar mitotic spindle controls the equal segregation of paternal and maternal chromosomes during the first cell division. By overexpression of a single protein, GPR-1, in the maternal strain we changed the structure of the mitotic spindle from bipolar to two monopolar spindles to segregate maternal and paternal chromosomes into different cell lineages, resulting in non-mendelian segregation for entire genomes. To follow maternal and paternal segregation of the chromosomes we used red and green histone markers respectively. By mating gpr-1-overexpressing hermaphrodites with wild-type males, mendelian F1 worms that express both markers simultaneously in all tissues and non-mendelian F1 worms that express red and green markers in different tissues will be produced representing embryos with bipolar and embryos with two monopolar spindles. Thus, we show that the rules of genetic inheritance can be changed, which may inspire the formation of a new field of synthetic zoology. Transcriptional profiling was done to investigate the differences in gene expression between mendelian and non-mendelian offspring. Approximately 60 adult worms were used per sample. Four conditions were collected: hermaphrodites of the paternal strain, hermaphrodites of the maternal strain, co-segregating (mendelian) F1 after crossing of parental strains, and (non-mendelian) F1 that segregates the paternal genotype to body wall muscle, intestine + germline and the maternal genotype to the nervous system after crossing of parental strains.
Project description:According to Mendel's laws, each parent makes an equal genetic contribution to an offspring in sexually reproducing organisms. The bipolar mitotic spindle controls the equal segregation of paternal and maternal chromosomes during the first cell division. By overexpression of a single protein, GPR-1, in the maternal strain we changed the structure of the mitotic spindle from bipolar to two monopolar spindles to segregate maternal and paternal chromosomes into different cell lineages, resulting in non-mendelian segregation for entire genomes. To follow maternal and paternal segregation of the chromosomes we used red and green histone markers respectively. By mating gpr-1-overexpressing hermaphrodites with wild-type males, mendelian F1 worms that express both markers simultaneously in all tissues and non-mendelian F1 worms that express red and green markers in different tissues will be produced representing embryos with bipolar and embryos with two monopolar spindles. Thus, we show that the rules of genetic inheritance can be changed, which may inspire the formation of a new field of synthetic zoology. Transcriptional profiling was done to investigate the differences in gene expression between mendelian and non-mendelian offspring.
Project description:Comprehensive list of SUMO targets from the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. SUMO conjugates isolated from transgenic worms carrying 8His and GFP tagged SUMO. The constructs rescues the lethal knock-out of a single SUMO gene, smo-1. SUMO conjugates where isolated from heat shock, arsenite exposure, and UV treated SUMO-GFP worms as well as from control non treated animals. In parallel identical purification procedure was performed with non-transgenic worms and proteins identified with this control where excluded.
Project description:Transcriptional profiling of heat-shocked worms was compared to non-heat-shocked worms to determine genes that are induced upon heat shock in each species; heat-shock-induced genes in each species were compared