Worm Breeder's Gazette 13(3): 28 (June 1, 1994)
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.
In addition to this embryonic phenotype, four out of five of the zyg-1 alleles show an egg laying defective (Egl) phenotype at 25°, although none are fully penetrant. All five alleles show an increased penetrance of this Egl phenotype when heterozygous with ccDf5 ,a deficiency which deletes zyg-1 .My preliminary analysis suggests that this defect is due to structural changes in the vulva, and I am in the process of determining whether this is due to a failure of cell divisions similar to that in embryos. The temperature sensitive period for the allele zyg-1 ( it25ts )is at the L2 /L3boundary (25 to 26 hours after hatching), which is when the fates of the vulval precursor cells are determined. This suggests that zyg-1 may act at this time to prepare these cells for the subsequent divisions. Our current hypothesis is that zyg-1 is needed to produce or maintain functional centrosomes, and is used specifically in the early embryo and in the vulval precursor cells.
I have also initiated a molecular analysis to further clarify the role of zyg-1 in these cell divisions. zyg-1 is between clr-1 and lin-4 on chromosome II, and is deleted by ccDf5 .Using transformation rescue, I have determined that zyg-1 is contained in a 4 kb piece of the cosmid C08D10 .I expect to begin sequencing a cDNA corresponding to zyg-1 very soon.
2. Kemphues et al., Genetics, 120, 977-986.