Worm Breeder's Gazette 2(1): 14
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.
By EMS treatment, many ts mutants have been obtained (1). Among autosomal mutations, several are multifunctional and pleiotropic. In one class, the mutations affect gonadogenesis and embryogenesis and give sterile or lethal worms, according to the stage of development which they are exposed to restrictive temperature. In another class, the mutations may affect several stages of gametogenesis, for example, by blocking gonial multiplication when newly hatched larvae are maintained at 24 C and by preventing the development of spermatozoa and oocytes when worms are raised at a restrictive temperature at the end of the third larval stage. A more interesting autosomal ts lethal mutant is actually studied by Abdul-Kader. This mutant exhibits in the temperature range 13 C to 24 C, a morphological malformation in which the tail instead of being filamentous, is spherical. On the other hand, when these worms are exposed to 20 C during the temperature-sensitive lethal period only, the adult mutants are considerably shorter, being 2/3 of the length of control worms raised at 13 C. Special genetic studies of this mutant suggest that a single gene is responsible for the three phenotypes: morphological malformation of the tail, conditional lethality and temperature-dependent length of the worms.